


Stress Fractures

by J_Baillier



Series: Screaming In Cathedrals [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angry John, Angst, Borderline pathological codependency, Death in the Family, Developing Relationship, Doctor!John, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Followed by a little bit of actual slash, Hemming and hawing, Injury, Jealous John, John Loves Sherlock, John is not okay either, John's patience has its limits, Literal skeletons in closets, Lonely sea-ducks, M/M, Medical Conditions, Medical Realism, Miscommunication, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Pining, Poor Sherlock, Pre-Slash, Sad John, Sad Sherlock, Saying important things out loud is difficult, Serious Illness, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Sherlock Is Not Okay, Sherlock Whump, Sherlock is a Mess, Sick Sherlock, Slow Burn, There's also a case, Very protective John, Vulnerable Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-25 18:15:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4971310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Baillier/pseuds/J_Baillier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has barely recovered from major surgery when a death in the family turns his life into chaos again. John, who has been trying to adjust to the changing nature of their relationship, is left reeling from the impact as well. A story of love, death, family, loss and some ducks off the coast of Northumberland, as told by John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Almost back to normal

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to "The Road of Bones". It probably won't be too confusing to enjoy on its own, but you'll get a lot more out of it if you go through "Bones" first. 
> 
> This is for all the wonderful readers who journeyed through "The Road of Bones" with me. Due to some unexpected circumstances I am able to give this to you way earlier than I had anticipated. 
> 
> Thank-yous:  
> M, my pining co-conspirator with an academic degree in frug elaboration.  
> Mr B for being a man of awesome.  
> JK, author extraordinaire and an endless source of excellent writing advice.  
> A, for outstanding peer support in writing wondrous things.  
> H, my consulting conductor, who was a great help with the classical music research I did for this story.
> 
> And first and foremost I must thank J. He's the Sherlock to my John, the Mulder to my Scully and practically a saint, because he's put up with this crazy woman that I am for almost twelve years now.
> 
> =========================
> 
> Stress fractures are tiny fracture lines caused by repetitive application of force that normally wouldn't break a bone - the constant mechanical stress overwhelms the bone's impact strenght.

=========================

 _We almost made it_  
_But making it is overrated_  
\- _Placebo_

=========================

 

It's been two weeks since Sherlock was discharged from the neurosurgical ward at King's College Hospital. Surprisingly enough, the flat is still standing and Sherlock hasn't spontaneously combusted from tedium. 

He's been playing the violin a lot. He told me he thinks there's some sort of a residual effect from surgery, a slight deficit in his fine motor skills. I can't tell the difference but I take his word for it. He's gone through a good portion of his repertoire from some very aggressive-sounding Bach to the gentleness of romantic-era sonatas. The sound of the violin accompanies me while I do the dishes, sort out the laundry, pick up his books from the sitting room floor and reply to comments on my blog. It often lulls me to sleep at night. Surgery has not altered Sherlock's nocturnal habits one bit - he mostly stays up way past my capabilities.

He doesn't like to leave the flat. Not yet, anyway. Solving cases by email turned out to be a bust - he tried it after I brought his laptop to the hospital. He stubbornly claims it didn't work because the cases on offer were too boring, but I had a nagging suspicion that he was too tired and too hazy from having his brain poked to properly focus. 

I know he still worries about potential long-term effects. The aneurysm surgery went perfectly but he'll have to wait six months before an angiogram will confirm that the aneurysm is as good as gone. Before that his driver's licence will remain on hold, which he has complained loudly about, even though he rarely actually drives. Any hindrance to his independence is understandably a personal insult.

He seems to rely more on me now than he used to. He looks to me to tell me what he should or shouldn't do, which is new. He doesn't actually ask anything out loud, but I can guess what's going through his mind when he's about to do something physically demanding or borderline hazardous and he suddenly stops and looks at me inquisitively. Is it okay to not take the elevator? Is it okay if I do this experiment? I usually just nod or shake my head and he actually heeds this advice.

I caught him making an online search for hair growth tips one evening. He tried to pretend it was for a case. I didn't say anything. I know he hates how his hair still looks - they had to shave off a good portion of his curls for the surgery. He doesn't listen when I try to console him by saying that it'll grow back sooner than he thinks. 

He refuses visitors. I think it's at least partly because of how he looks. Before the surgery he regularly preened in front of the mirror but now it seems that he really wants to avoid seeing the Z-shaped scar that runs from the back of his ear across his scalp to the other side, framed by a strip of short hair amidst his usually thick dark mop.

All in all, life is gradually returning to normal. At least as normal as life with Sherlock Holmes can possiby be. 

 

 

"It's time, John!" Sherlock exclaims giddily six weeks after the surgery. He wants to go back to work. He had decided on a two-month moratorium on Yard cases, which he has assured me he wants to stick to, but he's decided that plucking a smaller case off the website might be a good idea. I think he's sticking to the two-month hiatus with the Yard because he wants to be able to hide all signs of the surgery without having to wear the 'ear hat', as he calls it. I understand his predicament - he's subject to enough ridicule my Lestrade's minions even without parading his illness for all to see.

I'm almost disappointed he's decided to start taking on cases earlier than anticipated. I've enjoyed these four weeks together, just lounging around the flat, watching crap telly, listening to Sherlock's monologues about mud swirl patterns and the sort, having decent food at regular intervals instead of sandwiches eaten while walking to a crime scene. I've even enjoyed the Cluedo. There's also been chess in which I always lose, Sherlock mocking my crime novels, biscuits at Mrs Hudson's, Sherlock mocking the games on my phone, typing up my backlog of case blog posts, Sherlock mocking said posts.

To sum it all up, I've enjoyed just being able to spend time with Sherlock without the rest of the world interfering all the time.

When Sherlock was discharged, I was determined to use this quiet time to sort out what I had begun to realize during his diagnosis and hospitalization - that I may have been hasty in my declaration that we weren't a couple. What we went through contained some moments which were well and truly beyond what simple flatmates and friends usually do and are to each other. I'm still coming to terms with that, and I haven't even breached the subject with Sherlock yet. I will, though. This much I've decided even though that is a conversation that scares me as much as Moriarty does. Maybe even more.

It seems that when times are difficult, some things are surprisingly easy. At the hospital, touching him, holding him had seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Now, back at home, without illness and fear stripping us of our roles, I find it hard to try and bridge the last gaps between us. I am now convinced that I want to, but there are so many unknown factors. I don't know how much he remembers of the first days post-surgery, while I remember everything. Late at night, when I lie awake in my bed upstairs, alone, listening to his footsteps downstairs, I really miss some aspects of those days. Seeing a side of him noone else gets to experience - just Sherlock, without his carefully constructed, flamboyant rockstar act to draw attention away from the real person underneath. 

What does Sherlock want? What am I prepared for? When push comes to shove, am I as attracted to him as I suspect I am? Is he attracted to me in that way? What am I to him? 

I thought I had so much time before cases and Mycroft and London and The Game would distract him again. Six weeks have gone by so fast, and all I've done is procrastinate.


	2. The Valkyries have chosen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A night at the opera with an unexpected ending.

Sherlock is not a superstitious person. He scoffs at horoscopes, refuses to knock wood and does not buy into the notion of omens. He does, however, seem to believe to some extent that full moon brings out the crazies. 

"The very etymology of the word lunatic, John!" he once exclaimed when I gently teased him about it. 

Lunatics indeed. Such as the stalker currently obsessed with the new star tenor of the National Opera, Carrington Waldegrave. Our first client post-aneurysm.

We are invited to Waldegrave's home to discuss the case. 

The door to the trendy Soho apartment is opened by a tall, blonde man very close to Sherlock's height, with a dazzling smile and enough product in his hair to rival Sherlock in this respect as well. His features are distinct - a sharp jawline and a sort of a classical profile. Classically handsome. He is dressed in what must be an expensive, well-fitted dress shirt and trousers belonging probably to an equally expensive suit. 

He looks like he's precisely in Sherlock's league.

I'd read about him in the papers. It seems that this man had managed to get many a teenage girl suddenly very interested in the operatic works of Wagner.

We are offered brandy. Sherlock arranges himself into an uncomfortable-looking plastic designer chair. I decide to stand by some sort of a sculpture which may or may not look like male genitalia.

Waldegrave explains the situation. He has been cast in the lead tenor part of Wagner's The Valkyrie, namely that of Siegmund. The opening night is going to be next week. He's been receiving rose-scented notes from someone for three months now. At first, he'd thought nothing of it - fan mail had become a regular occurrence after his hit role in Tosca. It was after the tone of the letters had turned homicidal he'd decided to contact the police. They wanted to amp up the security at the opera and even recommended he rescind the role to someone else. Waldegrave had understandably balked at the idea - this was a big money production, one that had the potential to cement his career and guarantee a steady income in the form of a record deal. Deeply dissatisfied with the efforts of Scotland Yard, he'd emailed Sherlock.

Sherlock usually rates stalkers between 1-3 on his arbitrary scale of interest, and thus rarely bothers with cases involving them. I guess he wants to start small to get back in the saddle or something, because he agrees to take the case. We will to attend opening night, during which the stalker has solemnly sworn to assassinate the object of his affections. Waldegrave is optimistic that Sherlock's observant eyes will be able to pick this person out of the crowd.

After agreeing on a battle plan and a fee Waldegrave and Sherlock then begin animatedly discussing opera. I stay silent, sipping the frankly quite awful brandy. 

My mind wanders to where it usually does - to Sherlock. I watch the two of them carefully.

I don't really doubt my attraction to him anymore. And I do strongly suspect that he's attracted to me as well. My thoughts and my actions are, however, two things separated by oceans and oceans of hesitation.

When someone like that appears in your life - or bulldozes into it, as Sherlock did, it takes awhile for you to reconstruct the image you have of yourself. There's no roadmap anymore. The image I had of myself has been changed so much during the past two years, that I'm struggling to keep up. And it's not just the sexuality. It's everything. I thought that the darkness in me stayed in Afghanistan, the soldier who was a little less affected by violence than a normal person would be expected to be, and who is little more reckless than is reasonable for a decent doctor. I'd thought that I could return to London and become this mellow, helpful, nondescript person and be happy with my choices. 

Then Sherlock happened, and I became a murderer before the sun had set twice on our strange relationship.

Sometimes I fear that if I give in to what seems quite inevitable, us, him and me, together, completely, it will devour me whole. And not solely in a good way.

Because Sherlock shines with the intensity of a thousand suns and it takes a lot out of you to withstand that in close promixity. Sherlock doesn't do anything by halves, and anyone embarking on a relationship with him doesn't have that luxury either. It takes quite a man to love Sherlock and survive. To handle that hurricane. And I already have quite a good track record.

When I manage to remind myself of this, it's easier to straighten my spine and feel a little less threatened by the tall, well-groomed songbird currently blatantly flirting with Sherlock.

"Do you enjoy classical music, John?" Waldegrave enquires in a light, conversational tone and runs his hand through his hair, stealing a sideways glance to see if Sherlock is watching. He is, and his expression is difficult to interpret. As far as I can tell, he's wary but intrigued.

"Some of it, yes," I reply, not wanting to engage in the topic any more than I have to because my level of knowledge will not get me very far. Especially in the presence of an opera singer and Sherlock, who probably has the repertoires of every bloody composer readily available somewhere in the Mind Palace.

"I've been educating him," Sherlock remarks, smiling at me surprisingly warmly.

Something seems to shift in Waldegrave's expression. "I take it you two are an item, then?"

The dreaded "you two", question. Fuck.

I hate these situations. Back in the day my answer would have been a steadfast no. Recently, a nagging need to add a 'but' after the exclamation has appeared. Sherlock doesn't seem to like answering this question, either. He didn't seem to care all that much before, but I think he's began to do so. Which means that we have a problem.

"Flatmates", Sherlock carefully articulates and straightens his left trouser leg with his fingers. It's a nervous tick. I've seen him do it before.

Waldegrave looks delighted. And inquisitive. I don't like it one bit.

"You are... Unattached, then?" he asks Sherlock in a slightly suggestive tone. I'm almost holding my breath. These kinds of moments make me feel like the bottom is dropping, like I'm being punished for not being able to make up my mind, not being able to sort my brain out and just seize the moment. I am gripped by a desire to derail the current conversation at all costs.

I stand up quite suddenly and blurt out a laugh that doesn't even sound like me. "He's taken. Married to his work, that's what he always says. No time for relationships." 

Sherlock glares daggers at me, even though I was merely parroting his own words back to him. 

Waldegrave looks mildly amused and sips his brandy. He doesn't look half as discouraged as he should.

Why brandy? Isn't cheap red wine what these Soho bohemian artists drink? Or some expensive pinot whatever, if they're teen heartthrob opera celebrities?

No one says anything for a moment and everything is awkward as pants.

I'm almost relieved when Sherlock shifts the topic of conversation to tailors, tweed, gorges and front panels. Tailoring. Another topic I've not much interest in. Sherlock and Waldegrave, however, seem keen to swap shopping tips. 

I've just sat down on the sofa and sighed when I notice Waldegrave's eyes narrow. "Who does you hair? It looks unusual, I don't think I've seen any photos of you in the press like this," he points out and reaches out with his fingers, clearly intending to touch the still-spiky hairs above Sherlock's right ear. 

I suddenly feel the need to stand up and stride to Sherlock's side. I feel like a coiled snake ready to strike. Where does this instant urge to protect Sherlock come from? Before it's mostly been me trying to shield others from Sherlock's sharp tongue. Now I'm suddenly rattled by the possibility that Waldegrave will say something that will likely do nothing worse than slightly embarrass Sherlock.

Sherlock shies away from his touch by turning his head. Waldegrave's expression changes as he takes in the scar now probably a lot more visible beneath the thinner areas of Sherlock's hair. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean -- What happened?"

Sherlock closes his eyes momentarily and when he reopens them he seems calm, collected, a little aloof. "I had surgery for an issue that is now of the past." He glances at me and frowns - he must've read the alarm on my face.

Waldegrave clearly wants more information but luckily has figured out from Sherlock's demeanour that further inquiries will not be welcomed.

We finish our brandies, exchange some platitudes and then bid farewell to Waldegrave. 

We take the Tube home, both of us content to just sit silently. 

Sherlock says little during the rest of the evening. He digs out the violin from underneath some papers on the floor and plays some Brahms. 

I like Brahms and have told him so several times when he's played some. I hold on to hope that he might have been trying to send me some sort of a message.

 

 

 

"Have you come up with a title, then?" Sherlock enquires as we stand on top of the ornate staircase of London Coliseum's entrance hall. Sherlock had insisted on the spot because he wanted to observe the audience flowing towards their seats before The Valkyrie premier starts.

"A title?" I ask, confused.

Sherlock rises onto tiptoes in order to get a better view over the crowd. "For when you type up this case for the blog?"

"'Fandom of the opera'?" I suggest.

Sherlock's mouth quirks into a ghost of a smile and he sighs in mock exasperation. "I wish you would stop trying to pass for clever." He then continues watching the people wandering in with the gaze of a hawk.

I watch him, instead. Sherlock is wrong when he claims I don't observe. I do, but mostly I observe him instead of the minutiae of cases, the puzzle pieces that he organizes into theories. I love watching him as he thinks, you can practically imagine the cogs turning, the processor sparking as his mind flies light speed in all possible directions. He looks tense, like a predator about to pounce the second something catches his eye. 

He is wearing a tuxedo, which sort of gives him the look of a secret agent, especially with all this staring at random people with a narrowed gaze. I have upped my garment game with a new suit jacket in navy and a white shirt. Not as nicely tailored as Sherlock's, but he told me I looked adequate. Next to Sherlock you take any compliment you can get.

I am hopelessly addicted to the moments when his unwavering and intense curiosity is focused on me. I don't even dare to imagine what it would be like to be the centre of his attention in a much more intimate situation.

I find that I'm looking forward to the opera. It's likely Sherlock won't need much help finding this pitiful stalker so perhaps I can even let my guard down and enjoy the evening. 

Sherlock did not seem so keen on seeing The Valkyrie. I know he doesn't like Wagner all that much - 'it's so heavy-handed, it's like the blockbuster summer film equivalent of classical music' - he once told me and I was surprised that he knew what a blockbuster was. Maybe I am indeed rotting his brain with pop culture, like he has complained several times.

Not even the graces of Mr Carrington Waldegrave have seemed to increase his expectations of this evening - he'd declared the case "a two" in the taxi en route to the Coliseum. Come to think of it, he had actually stopped reciprocating to the man's flirtation after my comment about his love life. Prior to that he'd seemed marginally interested as far as I could tell. Or not, since he's hard to read that way. Considering what a master manipulator he is, it could have merely been an attempt to trick out more information - it's not unusual that our clients don't disclose all prudent facts right away nor is it unheard of for Sherlock to use his charms to fish said facts out.

Maybe I'm just hoping that he's just not into anyone else. It's kind of unfair to hope for such a thing, because it's not like I've plucked up the courage to suggest I could fill that place in his life, either. Yet.

He doesn't seem lonely. I don't know what he wants. Getting rejected by anyone is unpleasant. Getting rejected by Sherlock Holmes would probably be devastating.

 

 

 

Two hours into the opera, as poor Brunnhilde is assembling the pieces of her broken sword ('the Nothung', Sherlock reminded me five minutes ago, as though this is something I am supposed to know by heart), Sherlock leans closer to me in our velvet-padded balcony box. "It's her," he says and subtly points towards a woman wearing a white dress on a nearby balcony seat. He passes me a pair of theatrical binoculars.

I raise my brows. I don't even have to ask how he knows, because he's used to explaining his deductions to us lesser minds all the time anyway. 

"The literary references and the vocabulary in her notes fit with her selection of a faux-victorian evening dress, and the greek-style cut of it is both suitably melodramatic and handy for hiding all sorts of weapons. She looks upmarket enough that the doormen would probably not have searched her in fear that she is a celebrity but her heels are cheap and worn, not to mention unbecoming of such a gown. She doesn't have a handbag or any other kinds of visible possessions with her, which points to her thinking she's not planning on leaving this building alive. I think she's aiming for a nice little murder-suicide on stage. How very pathetic."

Waldegrave had made sure we had not been searched upon entering either. I have my gun, but I'm definitely not planning on using it unless it's to save either of our lives. The police have a presence in the building, so it's not like we even need to be the ones to apprehend this lunatic.

Sherlock can't usually resist meddling in the action, though. He's probably hatching some sort of a crazy plan which will end in a spectacular wrestling match with the woman in white. 

Sherlock is looking at the stage but his gaze is distant. Deep in thought. His pocket, where he has his phone, is glowing faintly as the phone must be ringing. 

He doesn't answer, doesn't even dig it out of his pocket. Probably hasn't even noticed.

On stage, the Valkyries are riding. Or more accurately, flapping around large swaths of transparent cloth while standing on a dais, as this is quite a modern production. They don't fit my image of Valkyries - more like aliens from a science fiction movie with their shiny, bluish armors lit with tiny LED diodes.

Sherlock's phone lights up again. This time he digs it out and passes it to me without even looking at the screen. 

Four missed calls from three different numbers. One of them's Lestrade, which is strange because as far as I know his division is not involved with this case.

A text message appears on screen. 

SHERLOCK YOU NEED TO PICK UP RIGHT NOW. GL

I'm about to tap Sherlock on the shoulder and give him his phone back when my own phone vibrates momentarily with the arrival of a text. 

TELL SHERLOCK TO ANSWER HIS PHONE. GL

I grab Sherlock's sleeve and when he turns to face me I show him both our phone screens. He slowly blows out a breath, clearly annoyed, and tells me to keep an eye on the woman. He then disappears into the hallway outside our box, phone in hand.

Our potential assassin is staring at the masked figures moving around the stage, wiping away tears, clearly enraptured. Well, as long as she's that happy it's unlikely she's about to get homicidal just yet. 

Something is setting me on edge. It's like a premonition of some sorts. The opera doesn't hold my interest anymore. 

Something is wrong, I know it. I don't know how, but I do.

Sherlock returns to the box after a few minutes with a strange expression. He manages to look both put-upon and a little confused at the same time, which is a feat in itself.

"What's up with Lestrade?" I whisper, even though considering the loud screeching of the operatic choir I might as well be speaking in a normal volume.

Sherlock's lips tighten into a line and he seems to be processing something. "Lestrade is under the impression that Mycroft is dead. He says he has a friend in MI6 who says he's been killed in Yemen. It's clearly a ruse. If a British official had been killed it would be on the news."

The hairs on the back of my neck are still standing. My hands are slightly shaking as I fumble my phone out from my trouser pocket. 

BBCnews.com has never been this slow to load, has it?

I swallow as the screen finally loads and I take in the main headlines. 

The gravity of the moment does not escape me as I turn the glowing screen so that Sherlock can see what I'm seeing.

'Cabinet committee head and Chief of defense materiel killed by car bomb attack in Sanaa'. 

Sherlock does not look convinced. "There are dozens of British cabinet committee heads. Lestrade could easily be mistaken." He sounds adamant.

Sherlock doesn't usually dismiss things this easily. 

He glances at his own phone. "It's not like Lestrade would be in a position to be among the first to get confirmation of the precise identities of the victims. They would tell the families first."

He's right. The government officials killed in Yemen could easily be anyone else than his brother.

What happens next, however, leaves little room for doubt. None, actually. 

Sherlock's phone lights up with another incoming call, startling both of us. When Sherlock answers it, his expresson is full of alarm. 

"Mother?" he gasps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's notes: In Norse mythology, the Valkyries are supernatural beings who choose which warriors are to die in battle, and which ones get to fight another day.


	3. Brother Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft Holmes comes home.

 

 _Death ends a life, not a relationship._  
_\- Mitch Albom_

 

I wish Sherlock would talk to me.

Instead he makes endless cups of bland tea for the procession of well-wishers that drifts through our apartment. He's too impatient to seep the teabags long enough, so the tea always ends up bland.

He's so restless now. 

Molly, Lestrade, Mike and Harry - the latter surprisingly sober - are among those who pop by during the following days. They bring flowers, casseroles and other such tokens that Sherlock obviously can't fathom the purpose of. 

Now that the identities of the victims have been confirmed, the case is all over the press so visitors have to try and keep out reporters on their way in.

Even Waldegrave makes an appearance. I had called him after the Valkyries performance to tell him that the stalker had turned out to be a former schoolmate of his, a woman whose charms he'd rejected for obvious reasons. She had mistaken this as some sort of a twisted sign that they we're starcrossed lovers separated by fate. Something like that, anyway. I had also apologized for having had to decline his invitation to come backstage after the show because of a family emergency.

Sherlock had left the Coliseum hastily after his mother's call to catch a train home to Surrey. He'd spent the night there and returned to London the next morning looking quite haunted. He rarely sleeps during cases and it somehow never shows, but when he returned to Baker Street at around noon he had dark circles under his eyes and he reeked of cigarette smoke. I decided not to give him a hard time about it.

Sherlock had wanted to decline payment for our services to Waldegrave since we hadn't personally apprehended the woman. I reminded him that we weren't the police. He looked at me like I was a little daft, which he often does anyway.

I put the handsome bouquet of white roses Waldegrave has brought next to Sherlock's most recent maggott experiment, hoping the man will take a hint. I also put my palm on Sherlock's shoulder as he stands by the window, watching Molly hail a taxi with her fiancee. Sherlock doesn't look at me but tentatively touches my thumb with a finger as if to gauge what strange creature has decided to perch on his shoulder.

Waldegrave is sitting in my armchair, watching us. He makes small talk for awhile, inquiring about our work, about Sherlock's methods. Sherlock is uncharacteristically quiet, arranging and rearranging things in the kitchen. I answer Waldegrave's inquiries as well as I can and charitably even pour him another serving of tea.

To my embarrassment I realize that I am more concerned about some opera singer's waning infatuation with my flatmate than I am about the fact that Mycroft is dead.

Mycroft Holmes. Dead. 

If it hasn't properly sunk in with me yet I can only imagine the reality of it might be eluding Sherlock as well.

Sherlock's phone rings on the mantlepiece. He closes the curtains and I pass him the phone. It's obvious it's either of his parents. Sherlock's mother has been calling him a few times a day - they have things to arrange. The repatriation of the remains. The funeral. The emptying and selling of Mycroft's home, the sorting of his belongings. The reading of the will. 

I wonder if there will be a wake. Somehow I can't imagine Sherlock in such a thing, clanking together glasses of whisky with other mourners at a pub or someone's living room, teary-eyed, swapping nostalgic stories of Mycroft. Sherlock and Mycroft's parents seem like the sort of down-to-earth folks that they might want one, though. Maybe the family will gather at Mr and Mrs Holmes' house after the funeral.

I hate it how Sherlock withdraws into himself, because it means that I acutely feel the loss off the connection we'd managed to build during the recent months. I feel like something has been torn away from me. It makes me think of danger nights, of Irene, of Moriarty and my fear that there's the sort of darkness in Sherlock that I can't reach. The sort that might take him away from me somehow.

Sherlock wanders down the hall to his bedroom, phone still on his ear. Waldegrave takes this as a cue to bid farewell. I hope never to see him again. As I said, a client, nothing more. A dodged bullett. 

After Waldegrave leaves, I drop down onto my armchair and try not to eavesdrop on Sherlock who is still in his bedroom even though the phonecall seems to have ended. 

I really need to sort this thing out between us. 

 

 

 

A week before the funeral Sherlock spends the morning yelling at various people on the phone. It turns out that the military base that Mycroft's remains will be flown to by the armed forces is one that Sherlock has trespassed on at some point in the past. This means that he is effectively banned from attending the arrival of his brother. If Mycroft were still with us he could've probably fixed everything. We no longer have that luxury.

When it becomes clear that not even Home Office can do much to remedy the situation, Sherlock drops his phone on the sofa and demands that I go in his stead. 

Of course I say yes. How could I not?

 

 

 

Sherlock's father takes the train to London. I meet him at Paddington station. 

William Holmes is a tall, gracefully greyed man with a very pleasant demeanor. In a different situation I think he might present a wry sense of humour. He seems very patient - probably a necessity for a parent of Sherlock's. He doesn't look all that much like either of his sons but I figure out immediately which of the elderly gentlemen at Paddington station he must be. The slightly hunched shoulders, the apprehensive behaviour of a person who is looking for something or someone - I guess I've picked up a little something from Sherlock's deductive methods. 

We shake hands and I offer my condolences. This is all we manage before our ride arrives in the form of a black car in the vein of Mycroft's usual rides. We join a home office representative in the back - he is to act as our liaison with the military.

As we drive through the gates of RAF Northolt Airfield there's a sense of deja vu. This is where we flew out from en route to Afghanistan and this is where my flight landed when I returned home invalided. 

I don't share any of this with the man next to me. There's enough grief here without me adding to it. William Holmes looks lost in thought as he stares out of the car window across the seemingly endless, grey tarmac of the airfield.

We are taken to a hangar to wait for the plane. I exchange salutes with the major in charge. The funeral director is waiting by his hearse that's been parked inside the hangar. We can't sign any official papers until it's time to physically transfer control of the remains to the civilian authorities, but all the paperwork is ready and waiting for us on a foldout table nearby. Our IDs are checked. It's all very efficient and impersonal. 

I stick my hands into my coat pockets - it's chilly. Suddenly my phone chimes with a text and I bring it out of my pocket in my cold fingers. 

IS IT DONE? SH

I WILL TEXT YOU WHEN IT IS, I reply and set the phone on mute. 

The hangar doors are opened as the nondescript grey military plane lands. We watch side by side, Mr Holmes and I, as it rolls towards us into the hangar. 

"You don't bury your children. That's the deal. You give them love, a home, a good start in life and you don't ever have to stand by your children's graveside. That's how it's supposed to go, that's the deal you're supposed to get," Sherlock's father tells me with a stern tone. 

The latch lowers down, revealing two zinc coffins in the cargo hold. 

 

 

 

We are in the funeral director's office. Sherlock's mother, usually probably a lively woman, is quiet and in tears again and Mr Holmes is wandering around the rows on coffins on display with a forlorn expression. Surrey, where Sherlock and Mycroft's childhood home is and where they still live, is not very far from London but they've taken a hotel room in the City for a few days. I suspect it's because they want to be close to their surviving son.

Sherlock and the manager are going through a list of details for the burial. My flatmate is being awfully well-behaved - no deductions, just business. I can't help but notice that the manager is likely an alcoholic, clearly left-handed and probably has some sort of a pet. When you spend time in Sherlock's presence you start to pick up on certain things. Sherlock seems oblivious to it all. Usually he can't resist.

I was not very fond of Mycroft. He was a constant in our lives, a source of humour the tone of which varied between scathing and gentle. Perhaps, momentarily, he felt like a comrade. He was never really a friend, but our lives were inexplicably bound together by his little brother. Mycroft's association was very useful at times - a fact that Sherlock doesn't like to admit but he still he made use of his brother quite often in this respect. Judging by the bits and pieces I have learned of Sherlock's colourful past from other people, Mycroft had rescued him from tight spots more than a few times. According to Lestrade, getting Sherlock off drugs for the time being had been a joint venture between him and Mycroft.

It has always been hard for me to really understand the true nature of Sherlock and Mycroft's relationship. Clearly Sherlock had relied on him during some very difficult times, but was it out of necessity since he had few other people in his life, or genuine trust? They seemed to be so different - Mycroft was the ice man capable of keeping his emotion reined in with an unwavering focus and a definite ruthlessness. Despite what most people think, Sherlock was the softer one who clearly feels things a lot more acutely and just can't reach such a state of not caring about others. Maybe he has been striving to be like Mycroft but keeps failing? To me, it seems like a good thing not to be able to shut down one's emotions so completely.

In brilliance, they were evenly matched, and thus isolated from the rest of us. On the rare occasions that they worked together on a case supplied by Mycroft, they seemed to even enjoy their time together. Brothers in arms.

Still, what part of Sherlock's disdain towards him was genuine? What had happened between them? Could it be just the meddling, the surveillance since Sherlock himself had no qualms about occasionally making use of those very qualities of Mycroft and the perks the man's line of work offered to Sherlock's career as a detective? 

Did he love his brother, or merely tolerate him? And why?

 

 

Two days later Sherlock and his father head out to Savile Row while I stay at Baker Street with Sherlock's mother. 

Sherlock told me he needs clothes for the funeral. Maybe he does, or maybe he just needs to get out of the house. His father has been hovering, I'll admit that, trying to connect with Sherlock over asking about his experiments, enquiring about our work, curious about the son of whose life he probably knows and understand very little. Sherlock keeps snapping at him, and his mother, too. Mostly he just seems to want to be left alone. Perhaps this shopping trip is an attempt to get Daddy off his back for awhile.

I make tea, and join Mrs Holmes on the sofa. She squeezes my shoulder when I pass her a cup of steaming Earl Grey. She's a hugger, which I don't mind, but Sherlock probably abhors.

She puts her mug on the coffee table to cool and rummages around her handbag. Soon she produces an old, worn binder. A photo album.

"Seeing as you're sort of family now, John--" I don't try and gauge the meaning of this statement but clearly it's a positive one in her mind, "I thought you might like to see these."

I lift my brows encouragingly. "What is it?" 

She opens the album carefully. There are sheets of rumpled parchment between each cardboard page onto which photos have been glued. The album is clearly decades old.

Mrs Holmes gently lifts it and settles it into my lap. I flip away the parchment from the first page.

There are several spreads worth of photos of Mycroft first. First a content-looking baby in the arms of Mr Holmes, then a set of chronologically arranged toddler photos. The last one in the series is of a four-year old Mycroft Holmes, wearing shorts, eating strawberries.

"He was such a pleasant, well-behaved child," Mrs Holmes sighs in a way that suggests that this sentiment does not apply to all her children.

I nod and turn the page. The next photo is of a small boy, perhaps about one in age, with almost raven-black hair and an angry frown, clutching a dandelion in his fist. He is thin and pale and I can make a very good guess who this is. The hair is the same. So are the eyes - smallish, with a colour that changes according to the tone of the lighting. The focused expression. It has to be Sherlock. I can't help but smile. I've never imagined him as a child. How much of his current persona could have been predicted by the way he was at that age? Mycroft is standing behind him in the photo with a toy car in his hand and a content smile on his face.

"I take it Sherlock wasn't such a bundle of joy?" I inquire and Mrs Holmes laughs.

"He was a handful. They both were," she points out and I frown. Perhaps Mycroft's intelligence had made him an equally challenging one to raise?

When I turn the page again, I realize Mrs Holmes had not been referring to Mycroft.

There's a photo of two boys. One is Sherlock, of that I have no doubt, but _which one_? 

In the photo, the two boys are standing by a window, trying to see something outside. They look so much alike. The same hair, the same age. The other one is not as lanky, though. 

Confusion must be evident on my face, because Mrs Holmes suddenly looks apprehensive. "John?"

"Which one's Sherlock?"

Mrs Holmes taps her finger on the thinner boy. "This one, of course."

"Who is the other one? A cousin?"

Mrs Holmes looks taken aback. "No, that's Sherrinford, of course."

"I'm sorry, Violet, you lost me there. Sherrinford?"

"Sherlock's twin. But surely you knew that, John?"


	4. A requiem for Mycroft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John learns more about Sherlock's childhood. Sherlock navigates the silly things people do in times like these, and faces the press at Mycroft's funeral.

During the following hours, a tearful Mrs Holmes recounts the story of how the lives of her three boys changed irrevocably. 

Sherlock indeed had a twin. 

"They did everything together. Inseparable," Violet Holmes tells me, gently running her finger across a faded photograph of their whole family posing at a photographer's studio. It's pasted onto the centrefold of the album I'm still cradling on my lap.

Alan Sherrinford Thomas Holmes. 

The name keeps echoing in my thoughts, as I let the pieces of the puzzle that is Sherlock shift in my head, making way for all this new information. 

According to Violet Holmes, Sherrinford had been Sherlock's constant companion and co-conspirator. He had no other friends, nor did he seem to want to seek out any. "They had their own secret language, one that noone else could understand. Sherlock exhibited signs of something akin to Asperger's at a very young age, and Sherrinford helped him compensate for all that by being a sort of an interpreter between the world and Sherlock."

Mycroft had been six years old when the twins were born, and he was a great help in their care, often watching them when Violet walked to the village centre to get groceries or paid a visit to a neighbour. She never stayed out long. 

When the twins had been five years old and Mycroft eleven, Violet had fallen ill while her husband was out of town. She was forced to rely on Mycroft to watch the twins again while she sought out an urgent doctor's appointment in the village.

It was hard to listen to Mrs Holmes recount what happened that day. Tears running down her cheeks uninhibited, she ploughed on nevertheless, for some reason deadly determined to share the story with me. She had seemed downright shocked to discover Sherlock had never mentioned his twin brother to me. 

Judging my what Mrs Holmes had to say, no other event in Sherlock's life had affected him to the extent of what happened to Sherrinford. 

Long story short, he drowned in a river near their home when Mycroft had been supposed to keep watch over them. When Mrs Holmes had walked from her cab towards the house after her doctor's appointment, still in the throes of a gallstone episode, she had suddenly heard Sherlock screaming like a wild animal somewhere behind the house. 

The scene that greeted her when she ran to the orchard still haunts her. On her face I could see not only sorrow, but the ghosts of shock and regret.

Mycroft had been reading a book while the twins played by a small river running through the fields. Neither of them knew how to swim, and had been sternly told off by their father never to venture too near the water. Probably reaching for something interesting that had been floating past in the stream, Sherrinford had fallen in. Mycroft had not been able to get him out in time. By the time an alarmed Violet Holmes managed to locate her boys, a soaked Mycroft was carrying the grey, lifeless, limp Sherrinford towards the house and Sherlock was practically running around in a frantic circle, screaming nonsense.

"When Sherlock was older he must've accepted that it was just a lapse of judgement on Mycroft's part, an accident, just a blink of not being perfectly observant, but you have to remember, John, that he was only five years old at that time. He didn't understand. He truly thought for a long time that it had somehow been Mycroft's fault."

'Observant'. The word suddenly has gained a terrible ring to it. This is practically Sherlock's religion. There's suddenly something haunting in the way he's adamant to spot every little thing, never to miss any clues. He once told me he is no hero, but he does seem to enjoy saving people. When he sometimes fails to solve the puzzle in time and we don't get to the victims before it's too late it hits him hard. He never says anything, but you can read it in his silences and hear it from his violin.

"We couldn't take Sherlock to the funeral because he kept passing people notes that Mycroft was a murderer. He refused to talk to Mycroft for two years and reverted to that infuriating secret language when it came to talking to the rest of us. The doctors were very concerned. They warned us that it was possible he'd lost what little ability he'd had to start with to connect with others. Sherrinford had been the filter through which he could understand the world, someone who understood both normalcy and him. For a time I thought that he would never be okay, would never survive."

"But clearly, he did," I suggest.

"They kept throwing these words up in the air, like autism and dissociative disorders, but me and William, we were always a bit sceptical of it all. I just thought that if you're so little and you've got that much to be sad about, why does there have to be a diagnostic code for it?"

Violet's broken attempt at a smile holds little joy. She blows her nose into a paper napkin I pass her. I have met my fair share of people who have lost loved ones. I have lost people, too, but I still feel that assuming I could understand what she has gone through would sound preposterous. What any of the people in the album photos have gone through, really.

Violet has now lost two sons out of three. I remember her husband's words at the hangar. This is truly not how it's all supposed to go.

"I think some of that shock, that grief has stayed with Sherlock, has soured his relationship with Mycroft, even though he understands it was nobody's fault, really. But understanding doesn't change anything. Sherrinford is still gone."

I nod.

"Mycroft did always think that Sherlock had a penchance for being unreasonable and blowing things out of proportion. I think Mycroft has probably been trying to make up for what Sherlock lost. Trying to look after him. I have always loved seeing them together at Christmas, hoping that they might bury the hatchet. They often seemed quite chummy but there was always this sense of rivalry on the bottom of it, this deep-seated dislike. Breaks my heart, John, it really does." She straightens the edge of her gray pencil skirt. 

"I think Sherlock has been lonely for a long time," Violet Holmes then tells me, and a hint of hope creeps into her waxy smile as she studies my face with some of the same intensity I am used to seeing in her surviving son's expressions.

 

 

 

After Mrs Holmes leaves for their hotel, clearly exhausted from talking about all this, I'm left sitting on the sofa, feeling rather shellshocked.

I think I get it now, the way in which Sherlock would accept assistance from Mycroft but still vocally disapprove of the man. 

I still feel slightly disappointed that the existence of Sherrinford is something that Sherlock hasn't felt comfortable to share with me. He has built a facade that puts people off - maybe he's convinced that there's noone who could possibly be to him what his brother was. Noone who could understand him to that extent.

Or maybe it simply hurts too much. He was five when Sherrinford died. A child that small lacks understanding of the intricacies of human behaviour, but is very capable of forming strong, permanent memories. And grudges. I remember things from when I was five, bad things. Things I don't like to think about even though now, as an adult, I am very capable of looking at them rationally. The emotions in bad childhood memories somehow sneak past our intellectual defences.

Sherlock had been deprived of the most important person in his life. Have all others seemed inferior even since? Is he convinced that not even someone who he might love and someone who would love him back could fill that void? 

 

 

 

On Saturday morning I dress quickly and then watch Sherlock restlessly flit about the flat. He keeps making seemingly unnecessary, passive-aggressive phone calls to whom I assume are the Home Office people responsible for the funeral arrangements. The service will be held at noon, and even though it's just nine in the morning he is already dressed in his new black suit. 

His nervous energy is setting my nerves on edge. 

At ten, after watching him try to pace a trench into the sitting room carpet, I decide to drag him out for a walk. 

"A walk, John? To go where?" he demands.

"A flower shop?" I blurt out since it's the only destination that occurs to me for some reason. 

He crosses his arms, standing in the doorway, wearing his scarf but not yet his coat. "The Home Office will take care of the floral arrangements for the service. I don't see a need to --"

"What about the burial?" I interrupt.

"What about it?" He clearly has little patience for my suggestions, but he puts on his coat nevertheless. Perhaps he was hoping for a distraction.

"Close relatives often leave flowers on the graveside or on the casket," I remind him. 

Sherlock rubs his forehead with his forefinger and looks thoughtful for a moment. Or distracted, to be precise, like he's remembering something. "I've never really understood the point." 

How many funerals has he been to? I remind myself that he never attended Sherrinford's. 

He doesn't know that I know. I feel guilty, somehow.

I grab his coat sleeve and start dragging him towards the stairs. "It's the sort of silly stuff people do in times like these. Just go with it."

"But why?" he asks, but still follows me down the stairs.

I pause to open the front door and steal a glance at him. He looks composed but exasperated. 

"It's just a gesture. A final farewell."

"But it's not. The person is gone. They won't have any use for flowers."

"It'll make you feel better," I try.

"How?" he asks as we head down the street towards a flower shop nearby.

Oh, Sherlock. I don't have an answer for you.

In the shop it only takes him a minute to decide on the flowers he wants. He picks a bouquet of white calla lilies. To me the large, geometric flowers look intimidating and a little cold, and for a second I think they're a lot like the self-image Sherlock tries so hard to project to the world.

 

 

We are taken to the funeral in a black car that reminds me of those vehicles I was coaxed into every time Mycroft Holmes wished to have a chat. I'm sure the parallel isn't lost on Sherlock, either. 

He's wearing sunglasses for some reason. He looks very odd in them. 

I'd had so many things on my mind that asking Sherlock about the funeral details hadn't really occurred to me. During the car ride I realize that we're not heading towards Surrey at all. I knew that Mycroft would be buried in the graveyard of the village where their parents live, and I had assumed the service would take place in the parish church. 

I realize how wrong I had been, when the car comes to a halt in front of Southwark Cathedral's Refectory area on the South Bank. Mycroft was a prominent political figure, after all, so I should have realized the funeral would be a big event since even Home Office had been involved in its planning. 

Sherlock's parents are traveling in a separate car, down a separate route. The death of the two British politicians has been all over the news for two weeks now, even prompting some diplomatic hassle between the UK and Yemen. There was bound to be some media presence and Sherlock wanted to spare his parents from all that.

Sherlock stretches his back before exiting the car. He straightens his spine and then flings the door open. A gaggle of photographers descends on him immediately.

I'd been so focused on watching him I hadn't yet taken stock of the size of the crowd gathered in front of the Cathedral. There are protesters of British involvement in Middle Eastern politics and tabloid and major newspaper photographers seeking good positions for getting interviews. I spot a couple of cabinet ministers giving comments to the press, while the police are keeping the protesters at bay.

I join Sherlock in front of the car, momentarily mesmerized by this further proof that Sherlock's statement of Mycroft being the government wasn't an exaggeration in any way: the prime minister is walking towards the church, surrounded by aides and security guards.

Sherlock removes his sunglasses and turns to address the expectant-looking crowd of reporters that are beginning to circle us like a shoal of sharks. The questions they pose are what one would expect, really. 'How do you feel' and the sort. Sherlock's answers are succinct, uncharacteristically courteous. 

A twentysomething man thrusts his microphone a little too close for comfort and asks Sherlock about the rumours that Mycroft has intervened on his behalf in the past, sparing him from criminal convictions. Sherlock's gaze fixes on to him and narrows. I feel giddy, expecting a fine verbal evisceration. 

It never comes. With a calm and calculated tone, Sherlock answers that his brother was an exemplary public servant. He then enquires dryly whether it still is considered bad manners to speak ill of the dead. The reporter doesn't answer.

Sherlock then steps back, grabs my hand in his and determinedly begins pulling me towards the main entrance of the Cathedral. 

"Don't linger, John," he says as I turn my head towards the crowd, momentarily slowing my steps. There's a flurry of flashes going off. Goddamned tabloids. 

The next morning every and each one of them will likely feature a photo of us holding hands. Not that I care.

 

 

 

After entering the Cathedral we idle towards the entrance to the Nave. Half the seats are already taken - we're supposed to have reserved ones somewhere in the middle. 

I wonder who all these people are. Many look like relatives - as far as I know the Holmes clan is a sizable one. There are a few dozen people who look like barristers or politicians - probably Mycroft's coworkers and other public figures who felt it necessary to make an appearance. I can't make out many guests who seem like they might be the man's friends. Mycroft's line of work was not conducive to friendships. Still, he chose that sort of a life for himself, even though with his talents it can't have been his only option. 

Anthea or whatever her name is, sits near the back of the main hall of the Cathedral, fiddling with her phone as always. Having no visible sentiment probably worked in her favour when she applied for the job.

Funerals are strange in the way that the surroundings, the music and the atmosphere always pulls you in. Even if you weren't very close to the deceased you always get emotional to some extent.

A choral piece is playing in the background, and as I sweep my gaze across the large Cathedral I realize there's an actual choir and an orchestra arranged into the North and South Choirs of the church. 

I glance towards the main entrance. Sherlock has gotten stuck in the foyer, ambushed by some elderly female relative who's dead set on pinching his cheeks. I can't help but smile at the way he skillfully keeps thwarting her attempts.

After a moment Sherlock finally manages to escape and strides towards me. His expression is controlled, sombre, almost detached. He's great at keeping himself distant. I wonder if he's struggling. If he is, he is frighteningly good at hiding it.

We walk towards the front of the Cathedral. A crowd of people are blocking the view and it takes a couple of 'excuse mes' to enable us to get to the middle of the building. 

It's not far from here to our assigned seats in the Crossing area. I can already see the hand-written sheet of paper placed at the beginning of the right row that reads 'family'. 

The music has taken on a more aggressive air, its violin patterns discordant and sawtooth-like. There's something haunting and threatening in the tone of if. As it echoes in the arches of the Cathedral the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. 

I know Sherlock has picked the music for the ceremony. Since he was more well-versed in Mycroft's tastes than his parents, he had been appointed this task. He played some options to me at home, trying to gauge my opinion. There had been one piece to me had sounded suitably consoling and meditative - Faure's Requiem I think it was called, but despite my protests Sherlock announced he had decided to stick to the more menacing notes of Mozart's Requiem. The ceremony would then end with an instrumental piece by Mycroft's favourite composer, Penderecki.

Sherlock had refused to join his parents for the pre-funeral meeting with the bishop conducting the ceremony. Perhaps it was for the best. Sherlock is certainly not a fan of organized religion.

We take just a couple more steps and the middle of the Crossing, where the coffin has been placed, comes to view.

Sherlock halts. 

There's a pedestal where the blackish oak coffin lies, surrounded by floral wreaths. To me this does not seem so off-putting - after all, I had already witnessed the return of Mycroft's remains back to England.

For Sherlock, however, this is probably the moment when it really hits home. 

I draw in a breath as I watch him, realizing his composure is crumbling before my eyes. He's frozen on the spot, staring at the coffin, right hand squeezed into a fist, knuckles pale as he visibly fights for control. 

He turns on his heels. I grab his coat sleeve to stop him. "Sherlock --"

"Get to your seat," he hisses, "I will be right back," he commands in a tone that invites no arguments.

I let go of his sleeve and rock back on my heels as Sherlock disappears back into the thickening crowd on the main aisle. 

I glance at his parents, already seated on the row reserved for family, their arms entwined.

I curse silently even though we're in a church, and hurry after Sherlock. Thanks to his height he's quite easy to keep track of in a crowd. We still have ten minutes before the ceremony starts to get back to our seats. 

I follow him into the gents' toilets located in the foyer. 

The restroom is empty but one of the stalls is occupied. The crowd outside in the main hall is making quite a racket together with the music drifting through the restroom door, but I can still make out the unmistakeable sounds of someone retching nearby.

"Sherlock?" I ask quietly, leaning on the stall door. 

Silence. 

He's probably hoping that I'll be stupid enough to decide that it's probably not him in there after all and leave. 

"I know you're in there, mate. Are you al--"

"Yes," comes the unnecessarily loud and indignant reply.

"Do you need--"

"No." 

The toilet flushes and I back away from the door. 

Sherlock comes out after a few minutes, looking a bit peaky but calmer. The coldly determined expression he was wearing while speaking to the reporters has returned. He washes his hands and drinks from the tap. I pass him a tissue which he accepts without a word and dries his face. 

We walk back to our seats in silence. 

 

 

I half expect Sherlock to scoff when the bishop mentions him in his speech. "Mourned by his parents Violet and William and his little brother Sherlock whom he loved very much."

Sherlock draws in a breath while looking at his shoes. I inch my fingers into his open palm but he shakes them off. 

I guess he needs to face this on his own.

I leave him be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The music playing at the funeral is Mozart's Requiem in D-minor, and the particular parts I had in mind are Kyrie and Dies Irae. In this splendid recording of the mass, Kyrie start at around 05:26 followed by Dies Irae: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlhKP0nZII. 
> 
> The violin arpeggios mentioned actually belong to to a later part (Confutatis) but hey, artistic license and all that :)


	5. No connection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is angry, John is frustrated and it all goes a bit downhill from there.

_My love is no good_  
_Against the fortress that it made of you  
_ _\- Florence Welch_

\------------------------------------------------

 

Why have we picked up this strange habit of arguing at graveyards?

I find Sherlock sitting on the steps of the back entrance to Saint Peter's Church. We're in the Holmes family's home village of Woodmansterne in Surrey and the burial is about to start. The crowds present at the funeral service in London are now absent, just a small gaggle of relatives are slowly trickling into the graveyard. 

Sherlock is smoking, which I decide to ignore for now, even though the doctor in me really wants to remind him it's a risk factor for the formation of cerebral aneurysms. I know Sherlock would counter my nagging with some sort of an icy insult to my intelligence. When he's on one of his moods trying to get him to care for himself is a fruitless effort.

When he notices my arrivival a steely defiance creeps into his expression.

"Have you come to drag me back to the play?"

"What play?"

"The ceremonial scattering of the sand, the sprinkling of flowers on top and all the rest."

I sit down next to him on the steps and the sand groans underneath my shoes when I stretch out my legs a bit.

"Would it kill you to just go with it? He was your brother, after all."

He blows out smoke slowly. "I don't see what on Earth this charade has to do with him. He was not religious. It's all for the living."

I sigh. "I know, but it's just fifteen minutes. Do it for your mum and dad, eh?"

"Mycroft's dead. I'm here. I can't see why the ceremony could add anything of value to the situation."

"Be like that, then. Make it about you, like you always bloody do. 'I'm inconvenienced, I'm bored, I can't be bothered.' God forbid you could ever do something proper lest it kill you." There's an edge to my voice now which I hate, but sometimes Sherlock needs to be confronted a bit. And it's not like there are many others on this planet who would dare to do that. 

"Sometimes you could just give in a little, make people happy," I suggest. This sounds naive even in my own ears, but I don't know how else to put it. 

Sherlock stands up and grinds the cigarette stub underneath his shoe. "And this is my purpose, then? To 'make people happy'?" His tone is dripping acid but I don't care. At least he's talking to me. The thought consoles me enough that some of my anger abates.

My relief, however, is short-lived, because what Sherlock says next completely pulls the carpet from underneath me.

"I don't need you to take his place. I certainly never asked you to," he says, and icy, ruthless eyes bore into mine.

I blink while I clamber to my feet. Comparing myself to Mycroft is not something that's ever occurred to me. And why now?

Sherlock stuffs his hands into his coat pockets. "Tell me, John, where did the desire to fix everyone come from? Did you always need a project, someone to be saved, someone whose life to sort out? Couldn't fix the childhood, couldn't fix the parents, couldn't fix the sister so let's go to medical school and overcompensate for the rest of your life? Find a long-term charity project with an added perk of cheap accommodation?"

I swallow. "I didn't become your friend so that I could fix you," I reply quietly, trying to remain calm, but it's getting harder and harder. 

Lately I've done little else than try to attend to his needs. It's not like I did this expecting some sort of return gift, but I certainly did not expect to have this sort of abuse hurled at me.

I think I want to yell at him but it tugs at my heart that indulging will only make things worse, give him ammunition, give him a reason to storm off. I desperately need to keep this dialogue going.

I stayed because I wanted to. We were doing so well. Don't do this, Sherlock.

"No, you became my flatmate because your equally hapless and well-meaning friend Mike decided I couldn't be left to my own devices seeking out a sensible living arrangement. Another sorry excuse for a doctor with a misplaced saviour complex poking his nose into other people's affairs."

He steps closer, practically looking over me. I look up at him, trying not to be intimidated. Sherlock can be very unnerving when he wants to. 

"Should I be grateful that I now have you instead of Mycroft to tell me what I do wrong? 'You're grieving wrong, Sherlock. Why won't you behave, Sherlock. Quit smoking, Sherlock. Don't stay out in the rain, Sherlock!'" His tone is vile and he regards me with a scornful expression. 

I open my mouth to protest, to say anything, really, but he beats me to it. 

"What I need," he spits out, "Is just one fucking person in my life who thinks that I can actually manage without constantly being watched, berated and given guidance!"

He then walks away, coat flapping in the wind. I hate this feeling of deja vu.

 

 

 

I take a moment to let my angry frustration dissipate before I stride back to Sherlock's parents who are standing by the open grave, surrounded by the rest of the small group of relatives that have been invited to the burial part of the funeral. I pass the priest who is walking in the opposite direction towards the gates. The ceremony has ended, then. The priest is opening an umbrella as some raindrops have begun falling. It's chilly and there's a definite sense of approaching winter in the wind. How fitting.

Sherlock's mother greets me with puffy eyes and a weary smile as they stand by the graveside. Her husband has a hand around her shoulders. They look like they're holding one another together. 

I grab Sherlock's bouquet of lilies that has been left leaning on a nearby gravestone and toss it unceremoniously into the grave. It lands on the dark wooden coffin with a thump. 

"Where's Sherlock?" his father asks, smiling politely. 

"Somewhere being a reactive idiot," I blurt out and immediately feel embarrassed, but Mrs Holmes has nothing but a knowing smile on her face. "He does tend to try and run from his problems."

I turn to Mrs Holmes. "What did you do, then, when things got difficult with Sherlock after Sherrinford?"

"We gave him his first violin," Mr Holmes says in a hollow tone.

After a moment of confusion I connect the dots in my head. 

Music. A new language. An outlet for emotions. An alternate way in which to voice his frustrations. 

I don't have anything like that to give to him. Instead, all I know how to do is to stubbornly demand him to communicate like a regular person. I find it hard myself, talking about these sorts of things. I can't begin to imagine the pressure I must be putting on him.

My lips tighten into an angry line as a look down onto the final resting place of Mycroft Holmes. 

When I take a step back from the graveside and turn towards the gravel path I notice a fresh bouquet of flowers leaning on another gravestone nearby, one that belongs to another Holmes. 

'Alan Sherrinford Thomas Holmes' is what the engraving on the stone reads.

 

 

I return to London that same afternoon after declining an invitation from Sherlock's parents to stay at their home overnight. I feel like I need some time on my own. I'm still to angry and frustrated to be of any use to Sherlock.

He texts me while I sit in the train. I guess he's calmed down a bit, then. 

STAYING IN SURREY FOR THE WAKE. SCAN AND EMAIL ME THE CARFAX CASE PHOTOS ASAP. SH

So there is a wake at the parents' house after all. It doesn't surprise that Sherlock wants to distract himself with the materials of an old dead-end case. A convenient excuse to slink out of a social gathering. 

I'm not in the mood to indulge him. I don't reply to his text. Nor do I bother to dig out the Carfax case file when I return home. 

 

 

The next morning, according to The Sun, 'John Watson, the companion of celebrity sleuth bachelor Sherlock Holmes, must've been very fond of the deceased as he looked prostrate with grief at the funeral'. 

Prostrate with grief, my arse. More like surprised because I hadn't realized we were going to attend something akin to a state funeral. And that Sherlock had decided to hold my hand while doing it. Even though it was just to hurry us along to get rid of the damned paparazzi.

Sherlock comes home late in the evening and heads straight to his bedroom.

 

 

We fall into our old routines during the next few days, but the air still hangs heavy in the flat. We don't exchange a lot of smalltalk even when things are normal, so now our communication nearly grinds to a complete halt.

I'm not angry anymore. My irritation at Sherlock has had enough time to fume and then sizzle. 

Sherlock falls back onto old bad habits. Doesn't even try to hide the smoking. Ditches me at crime scenes to go chasing after whatever madman is responsible for the murder of the week. Keeps scratching his craniotomy scar which drives me mad, because I'm convinced it will get infected if he goes on like that. 

I want to tell him to stop. Stop all of it. I want to remind him to eat, to sleep but I bite my tongue. I want to tell him to bother to take the iron supplements prescribed by the nutritionist he reluctantly spoke to after the surgery after being diagnosed with a mild case of nutritional deficiency anemia during the course of preparing for surgery. 

During a consultation visit the bold nutritionist had taken up the possibility of some sort of an eating disorder, which had lead to one of Sherlock's finest verbal massacres of human spirit. 'It's not a disorder, it's just Sherlock', I wanted to tell the woman who was clearly choking back tears, but I'm not sure if she would have appreciated hearing it. I just smiled apologetically like an idiot. I do that a lot, act as a buffer between Sherlock and the world. It makes his life easier, but since he's too clever and too observant to be oblivious to what I do, I guess it might sometimes annoy him. 

It's a revelation, how much mothering and apologizing I actually do for him. Maybe Sherlock is partly right - between Mycroft's surveillance and my trying to keep him healthy and the flat still standing, there wasn't much privacy in his life. 

Still, what was I supposed to do? He has such a dismal track record of taking care of himself. Am I just supposed to watch while he fails to do all these things that he needs to, and say nothing? What sort of a friend would I be? 

Has Sherlock felt the creeping awareness of how close we had become lately? Is that part of the problem or just my wishful thinking?

I try to talk to him one evening but probably don't manage to choose my words right. He'd been quiet all evening, which is not strange in itself, but I took it as a sign that he might talk since he didn't seem too busy with anything. I ask if he's feeling alright even though I know he hates that. I guess I want to provoke him into reacting. He replies with an absent hum.

I press the issue. This produces a reaction, finally.

"What is it that you want from me?" Sherlock asks, after I suggested that he might like to talk about everything that's happened recently. "What is it that everyone wants of me? After the crowd-pleasing spectacle at the Cathedral, can't we close that chapter and be done with it?"

It's as though he's a coiled spring. There have been several major changes in his life recently. I think he's lost his equilibrium somehow and doesn't know how to get it back. Maybe my presence reminds him of the moments when he's not been as in control of his life as he wants to be. I wonder if he's recoiling from how dependent he became on me during the time that he was ill. 

He can no longer turn to Mycroft when he has run out of money, enemies or needs to bend the law to his will. Or when he's not alright.

Why is it so hard for him to turn to me?


	6. Privacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The will is read and Sherlock wonders about some ducks.

One of Mycroft's colleagues, a barrister, has been named as the executor of his will. We meet at Mycroft's home in Knightsbridge for the reading of it. It's an immense flat in one of the area's ubiquituous white nondescript Victorian townhouses. 

The barrister is late so we have some time on our hands. Sherlock and his parents go upstairs to Mycroft's study to seek out whatever important papers they can find in order to sort them out. I remain downstairs, just content to wander around since I've neer been there before. 

The place feels large and troublesome for someone who lives alone. Deducing from some remarks Sherlock has made, Mycroft has enjoyed occasional nightly company but he's never been in a long-term relationship.

The place seems almost sterile in a way. Everything is spotless. There are artworks and vases carefully arranged onto side tables. Vases of fresh flowers adorn the grand staircase. There is a lot of marble, oak and brass. 

I walk into the sitting room, flop down onto the stiff sofa and open the singular drawer the coffee table has. I feel slightly apprehensive for snooping but all of these things will soon be packed away by someone other than their owner anyway. 

There's a thick wad of photographs in there along with a stack of coloured papers.

Some of these I've already seen when Sherlock's mother showed me her album. Apart from childhood photos there are images of Mycroft at university, of a young woman I can't recognize and shots of someone's funeral. The last one in the pile is a photo of all the Holmes children, posing at a photographer's studio. Two toddlers with black hair, and behind them, arms around them, Mycroft as a bright little boy of around ten years old. 

The coloured papers beneath are children's drawings. A smiling sun, some fishes, a horse, a dead bird with crosses for eyes. 

The drawings are all signed by W.S.S. Holmes. Sherlock.

I put the papers and the photos back, feeling like an intruder. 

The barrister arrives and we gather in the dining room to hear the will.

 

 

 

Mycroft's Knightsbridge home will go to his parents. Some money will go to selected charities but the majority of his liquid assets have been addressed to Sherlock. 

I find myself drawing in a breath when the barrister reads out loud the amount. It's a substantial sum. The will states states that the money is to go to Sherlock to enable him to continue in his chosen vocation regardless of whether it proved lucrative in the future. It's hard to interpret what's going on his Sherlock's head while the barrister reads the will out loud. His expression mostly stays impassive, as though he's not able to decide what to make of this all. At times looks slightly suspicious, like he's expecting a curveball. This is Mycroft Holmes we're talking about, after all.

After all the assets have been announced I assume that will be the end of it. I am taken aback when the barrister passes me an envelope addressed to me. 

"Mr Holmes left explicit instructions that I was to ensure that this was not to be opened by anyone else than you, Dr Watson."

I inspect the envelope. It's made out of thick, creamy paper. Looks like very expensive stationery.

I glance at the barrister. "Did Mycroft -- Mr Holmes leave any word on whether I am allowed to share the contents with others?"

"None as such. I assume he has left that to your discretion."

Sherlock watches me carefully from where he's standing leaning onto a column at the edge of the room. He's frowning slightly, arms crossed.

I return to attention to the envelope and tear the edge off. It contains a white card with just one phrase on it, and a slip of paper with an internet address and a password.

'Look after him,' the card reads, nothing else. Not even a signature.

I dig my phone out from my pocket. Sherlock inches closer. I enter the address into my phone's web browser while Sherlock steps closer to hovers over my shoulder. 

It doesn't take me long to realize it's a web interface to some sort of surveillance software. I enter the password and a map appears with a blinking dot on it. It only takes a moment to realize it's showing the location we are all sharing at the moment. 

Realization dawns. The dot is someone's phone. 

Three guesses as to whose. 

This is how Mycroft has been able to find him, always.

Sherlock blows a gasket. Which isn't surprising, really. We've always known Mycroft has kept an eye on him but it's got to be different, seeing concrete proof of the man's level of intrusion into Sherlock's life.

There's a screaming match between him and Mrs Holmes. Mr Holmes looks like he's getting a headache. 

After cursing his brother to the seventh circle of hell so loud the neighbours probably catch a most of it, Sherlock announces that that he'd rather burn the money in a glorious bonfire on Trafalgar Square than accept a single penny. He then storms out.

I watch Sherlock stride towards Kensington Gardens from the bay window with Mrs Holmes by my side. 

"Mycroft was always supportive of this detective business of his. We were worried and sceptical at first, but Mycroft seemed to think this could make him happy," Violet Holmes muses and I nod politely.

I wish Sherlock could see the whole thing from that angle, too. I get it, he feels like Mycroft is trying to run his life even from beyond the grave, but still. 

I lean my knuckles onto the window sill. Sherlock has turned a corner and I can no longer be seen. 

I'm battling a sense of helplessness creeping in, wanting to grasp at straws. I turn to his mother who's picking an errand strand from her cardigan, looking thoughtful. "The violin. What else?"

Mrs Holmes raises her eyebrows as she meets my gaze. "What do you mean?"

I don't know how to articulate this without reminding her, again, of what she has lost. But I need to.

When it all went to hell after Sherrinford, what did you do?

When you thought you were going to lose Sherlock to this thing, too, what did you do?

I open my mouth to rephrase, but luckily Sherlock has inherited a large chunk of his deductive powers from his mother and I don't have to say anything more until Violet Holmes speaks. 

"We sent him away for school. William was convinced it was a bad idea but Mycroft seemed to be liking it at Harrow and I felt it could be a chance to start over for him. Carve a place for himself somewhere that didn't remind him of Sherrinford all the time."

"I assume it worked, then?"

Violet Holmes bites her lip. "In some ways, yes. He discovered natural sciences and buried himself in schoolwork. That went on for years until he dropped out of Oxford."

I let out a hollow laugh. "Yeah, he told me he'd surpassed his professors academically and decided there was nothing more academic life could offer."

I glance at Violet, expecting her to be amused but instead she looks slightly alarmed. "John, I only know bits and pieces from what I've managed to squeeze out of Mycroft through the years, but that is most decidedly not the reason." 

I feel slightly awkward discussing these things without Sherlock present, but it's not like I've had much success in coaxing him to share facts about his past. And I realize I'm of my at wit's end here, really.

Mrs Holmes looks me in the eye and straightens her spine. "Sherlock didn't have friends, so to speak. He only had the one during his Oxford years - Victor, his best friend. And Sherlock apparently made the mistake of falling in love with him."

My mouth is dry. 

This feels criminal, discussing Sherlock's romantic history with his mother of all people, but I still urge Violet to continue. "What--- happened?"

"To put it mildly, it was not reciprocated. He was severely humiliated publicly by Victor and other classmates. He dropped out and we didn't hear from him for two years. Mycroft managed to keep tabs on him, somehow. We assumed it was Mycroft who got him a job with the police and that gave him an incentive to clean up his act."

To my knowledge it had been a lucky accident, meeting Lestrade and getting involved with the Yard, nothing to do with Mycroft at all. But that's hardly relevant now.

Is this the reason Mycroft tried to hammer his Iceman's credo of sentiment being a terrible thing into Sherlock's thinking? Had it been an attempt at damage control?

 

 

 

Violet Holmes follows me to Baker Street after the will reading. I think she wants to spend some time with her son before they return to Surrey. When we enter the flat I'm relieved to find Sherlock at his microscope in the kitchen. 

I make tea for myself and Mrs Holmes and we take over the armchairs.

After awhile Sherlock gives up on trying to focus on what he's doing, because he keeps getting distracted by our talking. At least that's what he tells us. The words 'inane chatter' are used. His anger seems to have dissipated to some extent. He looks worn-down. A little sad, even.

Maybe some of this anger is indeed just that, sadness. I did witness him enjoy himself in the company of his brother at times.

After some goading Sherlock agrees to actually spend some time with his mother. 

Mrs Holmes is a fan of musicals and since Sherlock volunteers no other entertainment options, she makes him watch Moulin Rouge on BBC3 with her. 

I should've taped his reactions. 

Sherlock renames the film 'Sentiment - The Musical, now with tuberculosis and bad fiscal decisions'.

While the film plays, Mrs Holmes tries to convince Sherlock to accept the inheritance. He clearly doesn't want to talk about it.

In light of all that I have now learned, Sherlock has got to be the strongest person I've ever known. He's also definitely the most stubborn.

 

 

The next morning, I ambush Sherlock while he's shaving. During cases he rarely eats or sleeps but London's criminal cases will never catch him with a five-o'clock shadow. 

After showering, he always opens the door so the steam won't clog up the bathroom mirror. I think he likes bathing. Or maybe it just somehow helps his thinking. I'm regularly gifted with the sight of a stark naked Sherlock running around the flat when a sudden epiphany makes him momentarily forgot what he was doing in the bathroom. He usually runs to the sitting room to do some research on my laptop because he can't be arsed to dig out his own. I usually fetch his pants and drop them next to him on the sofa. He usually ignores my efforts.

He's very observant about the world. I'm observant about him. I know he sometimes borrows my shampoo when he's run out of his own and hasn't bothered to get more. He uses at least three sorts of products on his hair and prefers a traditional razor to an electric one.

At present he's standing in front of the bathroo mirror, draped in a towel, applying some sort of lotion to his face. I doubt his father has taught him this elaborate-for-a-bloke morning routine. Maybe he picked it up at some posh public boarding school.

I lean onto the doorframe, arms crossed.

"Sherlock?"

"Mm?"

I try to be brief and to the point. "You should reconsider about the inheritance." 

"None of your business, John." 

"It is sort of my business, if it affects your ability to share the rent. This could enable you to not worry about money when selecting cases."

"I don't worry about money."

"I know. I do that for you."

He pauses brushing his hair and measures me up with a weary glance. "I'm aware that I have let certain things go lax in my personal affairs. It shan't be a problem in the future."

"Going to start filing your own taxes and all, then?" I've always suspected that Mycroft has taken care of that for him, too. Sherlock uses bills as coasters and coasters as acid experiment material. 

 

 

 

The following Saturday it's my day off from the surgery and luckily Lestrade comes calling with a case to keep us occupied. Sherlock runs himself to the ground trying to solve it, but there's not enough puzzle pieces to go on yet. Noone is in danger so there's no actual deadline to this thing, but Sherlock has never been a poster child for patience anyway.

I wonder what he was like as a child. Mycroft was probably one of those kids who would happily wait for the marshmallow in order to get two. Sherlock would probably grab the first one and demand a second right away.

We return home as the sun is setting. Sherlock is frustrated while I am mostly just exhausted. 

I kick off my shoes and take over the couch. Idly flipping the channels, I decide on a nature documentary. I need something meditative to wind my brain down.

Sherlock darts between the kitchen and his bedroom in his dressing gown, absent-mindedly checking on some of his experiments and firing off a bunch emails. 

I want to - need to - talk to him about the inheritance again, but tonight I just can't be bothered. I need some rest.

The tv program, which I'm not even really watching, is nearing its end when Sherlock finally stops his faffing about and parks his bottom on the seat cushion next to me.

The program is about some birds living on the Farne islands off the coast of Northumberland. Eiders, I think these birds are called. The females do all the work breeding-wise while the males stay out in the open sea, spending their lives alone.

Sherlock is watching the program with a strangely intense concentration.

"I didn't know you were so into sea-ducks," I joke and he shushes me with an indignant expression.

We watch the rest of the program in silence. While the credits roll, I look at Sherlock. He looks like he's gone into his Mind Palace. 

In a moment, he opens his mouth and regards me with a curious expression. "Why would they do that?"

"Why would who do what?"

"The eiders. If they could stay with their partners, why would they choose to live alone?"

I'm baffled. "I have no idea."

"If they had someone out there waiting for them, why wouldn't they stay? If they knew how to function with others socially, why would they choose loneliness? Why would anyone?"

He looks so sad. Who is he referring to, really? Himself and his 'married to my work' self-imposed celibacy? Or Mycroft, who has enough social skills but also plenty enough cold calculation to avoid the sentiment both of them so malign.

"They're just birds, Sherlock," I offer.

He rises and disappears into his bedroom. I stay on the sofa, none the wiser.


	7. Fracture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John encounters a challenging patient at work.

Work is a welcome respite from worrying about Sherlock. At work it's easier to pretend that everything is fine, I'm in control and I know how to fix things. 

I'm currently on the payroll of the A&E department at Barts, which is run smoothly and efficiently by Mike Stamford. He contacted me because he needed a second-in-command of sorts, now that his time is mostly devoted to teaching and properly qualified teaching staff was hard to find. I jumped at the chance. Don't get me wrong - working as a GP is fine, but I think my personality suits the routineless buzz of the emergency room far better. Mike was particularly glad to get someone with a lot of trauma care experience on board, since he's an internist himself.

Mike's a great guy, really - very understanding about me having to suddenly disappear mid-shift when duty (in other words, Sherlock) calls (or texts, to be precise). 

I was surprised to discover that I actually enjoy supervising younger colleagues. It's a chance to fix those things that I see being done wrong or in an intellectually lazy manner. I get to mold the way in which future trauma surgeons and other acute care specialists do their jobs.

When I got up before seven this morning to get ready for work, Sherlock was already making a racket. When I walked into the kitchen, he was literally chasing someone down the stairs with a broom. I could only catch a glimpse of the person - a scruffy-looking woman with tie-dyed skirts, a sequin-embroidered turban and more beads that can possibly be good for anyone.

I heard the front door slam close, then hasty footsteps hurrying back up the stairs and then Sherlock emerged, huffing indignantly. He put the broom away and descended on the couch. 

"Client?" I asked, digging around the kitchen cupboard for a clean mug.

"She wishes. Wanted me to recover a spirit guide she had somehow displaced. A spirit guide, John! Wouldn't take no for an answer. And she didn't like it when I pointed out that if she truly was clairvoyant and not some cold-reading charlatan like all of them are, she would have known my answer would be a stern no without even bothering to come all the way."

"So you haven't got anything on, then?" I probably sounded a bit hopeful. It would have been lovely to be able to go to work with the knowledge that Sherlock would be at home, getting bored instead of trying to get himself killed in some back alley when he got too carried away and I wasn't there to keep watch. 

There were no clean mugs in the cupboard and Sherlock was now glaring at me. I abandoned all hope of being able to get a decent cup of tea at home and left for Barts early.

While I walked to the Tube station my thoughts drifted back to Sherlock. They always do. 

Back in the day I just thought that Sherlock would try to be sensible about the dangerous stuff as a courtesy to me. With things the way they have been lately, him drifting away from me, I no longer have that assumption to console me. Or maybe it was always just wishful thinking. 

At work I forced myself to push these concerns out of my mind while I busied myself with the usual mid-morning rush hour of A&E patients.

It's a busy day and I only get to enjoy a proper break quite late in the afternoon. I'm in the break room discussing trauma-associated coagulopathy with a couple of internal medicine middle grades, when the triage nurse comes looking for me. "Dr Watson? You're needed in Suture Room two. The dog bite and arm fracture?" she reminds me. 

I nod, slightly alarmed. The Emergency Medicine trainee I had assigned to that case, Rhys Henley, is one I can usually leave pretty much to his own devices. He's quite experienced already, very knowledgeable and obviously talented - wants to be a trauma surgeon and what is more, he has a very good bedside manner. If he's asking for backup there must be something major going on. "Did Rhys really ask for me?"

The nurse's expression is difficult to read. "No, the patient did."

Rhys must've done something truly appalling to achieve this level of distrust. This I need to see. Since I'm the supervisor of the unit at the moment, I mentally prepare myself to provide a thorough apology for the patient on behalf of the department for whatever blunder Rhys has managed. I follow the nurse down the hallway.

 

 

 

I straighten my spine and flash on what I hope is my most disarming smile as the nurse flings open the door to the Procedure Room. 

Said smile fades as I take in the scene.

I notice Rhys first. He's removing a pair of bloodstained gloves resignedly, his eyes darting up to meet mine, seemingly pleading for me to sort this mess out. I give him a nod, trying to look sympathetic. I remember what it was like to be a recent graduate - you had the skills and the knowledge, but patients sometimes failed to see that and treated you like a teenager who had stolen a white coat.

When I sweep my gaze across the room to take in the whole scene, I am taken aback when I realize what's going on. 

On the trolley sits Sherlock, in his shirtsleeves. 

His expression is both typically sardonic and alarmingly upset at the same time. He's cradling his right arm on his lap as though trying to immobilize it. His left arm looks a bloody mess. There are obvious bite wounds - deep ones - in several places along the limb, blood slowly trickling down onto his lap from the larger ones. A finger looks dislocated. 

I close my eyes momentarily to stiffen a sudden influx of anger. Then I turn to Rhys. "You can go. It's fine."

Rhys spreads his arms, clearly frustrated. "He wouldn't even tell me what happened! Just kept asking for you."

I give Rhys an apologetic smile. "It's okay. I know him. I'll take it from here."

Rhys leaves with the nurse, who has obviously decided to give us a moment before assisting me, bless her, and I'm left standing in the middle of the room.

I turn to Sherlock who is, for lack of a better word, looking quite forlorn. "What the hell did you do?" I ask. "It's only four hours since I saw you and you said you had nothing on. NOTHING, Sherlock."

He looks sheepish. "Lestrade called after you left."

I want to remind him that he's supposed to tell me when there's a case. I don't. I just give him a stern look. 

Sherlock takes this a sign that I don't believe him. "Very well. I hacked his email."

I raise my eyebrows while I grab a pair of gloves from a packet on a side table. "The suspect had a dog?" I offer.

Sherlock shakes his head. "No, but home burglary victims in Brixton had one. There was no warning sign on the door. How was I to know there was a very stealthy doberman waiting in the back garden?"

I snap on the gloves and drag a stool next to the gurney. "They didn't put it on a leash when they let you in?"

Sherlock looks at his shoes. "They didn't exactly let me in," he muses and then smirks.

Our gazes lock and for a moment everything is the way it should be. Us, against the world, bending the law a little bit when a case calls for it. I'm still angry, though. "So you thought you might to try help a family who's had a break-in by breaking into their house? Very reassuring. They probably feel so much safer now." 

Sherlock shrugs. "My results make up for my methods."

He gingerly offers me his right arm to be examined and I balance it onto my lap after grabbing a plastic sheet from a nearby table to avoid him bleeding on my white coat since I'll have to examine the other one as well. He winces when I start pressing my fingers along what I suspect is a fracture of the radial bone. His wrist forms a distorted angle, looking a bit like a dinner fork, which points towards a classic Colles' fracture. I test the sensory functions and movement of all the small tendons. He does what I ask when I request him to move his fingers in different ways, even though it clearly hurts. The peripheral circulation seems fine, capillary refill normal. "Have you had films done yet?"

Sherlock nods. "The idiot who was here before ordered them."

I gently lift his broken arm and place it on his lap and then head towards the side table where I can bring up the x-rays on a PC. "He's one of my best trainees, actually. He could have easily handled all of this. Besides, King's College A&E would have been just around the corner from Brixton - why come all the way here?" I ask while I leaf through the films.

Sherlock idly pokes one of the ragged bite wounds on his elbow with his finger. "I didn't want to go to King's. I wanted you," he then says quietly. 

I freeze. I can't see his face because I'm behind him. 

My mind suddenly takes me back a few months to another hospital visit. King's College A&E is where Sherlock was taken that night that he had woken me up, terrified after his hand had stopped functioning while playing the violin. The night he'd been diagnosed. No wonder he didn't want to go back there. 

I want to kick myself for again making the mistake of thinking that Sherlock isn't as prone to sentiment as the rest of us. After all, during the past months I have witnessed how patently false that notion is.

Of course he doesn't want to go back to King's College.

God, Sherlock. I should know these things. I should know you. 

There's a sudden glimmer of hope that makes my chest ache: maybe he misses this, misses us the way I miss it all. The way in which we lived in a world of our own after the surgery. The way in which he had let me glimpse into his mind, into his fear during those weeks before and after the surgery.

I am at a loss what to reply. I don't want to spook him. An admission like that is prone to embarrass him. I need to play this exactly right.

After the slow computer finally agrees to launch the PACS radiology database I go through Sherlock's x-rays and then turn to face him again. "It's a Colles fracture on your wrist. The most common type there is, and usually easy to treat. It'll be just a set-and-cast, unlikely to require surgery. We'll have to get you a follow-up visit, though, to make sure the bone position doesn't collapse during the cast treatment." 

With Sherlock it's never 'just' a cast, though - it'll mean a month of trying to keep him from fiddling with it, scratching underneath with a twisted coat hanger and getting it wet and contaminated at crime scenes.

I return to my stool and move onto gently inspect his left hand. One finger is definitely dislocated and the thumb looks a bit swollen - sprained, perhaps, if not broken? Three gaping but luckily quite superficial bite wounds adorn his forearm, trickling blood.

I summon the nurse and we get to work cleaning the bite wounds and then sluicing the arm with water. After a final rinse with saline we cover the wounds. After that we focus on the wrist fracture. I inject a dose of lidocaine into the wrist joint to numb it.

The block takes about ten minutes to kick in, during which I call the orthopedics department to organize follow-up. I want to ensure this gets the best possible care since any impairment in function would be likely to affect Sherlock's ability to play his violin.

Sherlock seems to relax slightly when the local anaesthetic kicks in. I've never had a wrist fracture so I can't really gauge how painful a fracture of this type can get. Sherlock isn't whiny about small or even moderate amounts of physical discomfort, so I take the beads of sweat on his forehead as a sign that the arm has been rather excruciating. 

The nurse, Lydia, echoes my assessment by suggesting pethidine. I shake my head. "Alfentanil, one milligram. And two grams of Tazocin. How's your tetanus status?" I enquire Sherlock.

He looks up, gaze narrowing as he tries to recall. "Remember that nail gun incident last year? You gave me a booster then."

I nod. I'd forgotten about that one. Minor injuries are such a regular occurrence with Sherlock that some are bound to slip my mind every once in awhile.

Lydia returns after a couple of minutes, wheeling in a small table with cast materials. 

Sherlock watches with mild interest as I drape his arm in a sterile plastic sheet, cut out some non-viable looking skin from the edges of the two larger bite wounds and after a thorough exploration close them with a couple of loose stitches so that they won't bleed.

"Aren't you going to suture them up properly?" Sherlock asks.

"Bite wounds almost always get infected so a complete primary closure is not recommended. How'd you managed only to get your arm chewed up this bad but not your legs?"

"I knelt down and hoped the coat would be thick enough to prevent deeper wounds. Obviously that assumption was false. The beast latched on and didn't let go until I decided to jump over the fence. The ground was lower on the other side of the fence - I fell and tried to stop the fall with my right hand."

"Where's your coat then?"

"I forgot it in Lestrade's car." 

"He didn't arrest you for burglary, then?"

"I solved the case in the car so he decided not to."

I shake my head, smiling. I can easily imagine Sherlock bleeding all over Lestrade's backseat while giving a flamboyant lecture on his deductions.

The wounds now look satisfactory so I put away the suture kit and remove the drapes. Lydia stabs Sherlock in both deltoids with the antibiotic and the fast-acting opiate. Sherlock bites his lip but doesn't complain, which is unusually timid of him. I wonder what he's thinking. Remembering something?

Sherlock turns his arm so he can assess my handiwork. "The wrist doesn't hurt anymore," he points out, sounding quite surprised at the effectiveness of the local anesthetic I've injected.

"It's called modern medicine." I gently take hold of his wrist. "This next bit will hurt, though, unless we give you some Entonox?"

Sherlock shakes his head. "Makes me throw up. Not touching that stuff again."

I bite my lip. "Alright then, on a count to three. One---" and on that note I crack his dislocated finger back into place. Old, silly trick, that, doing it when the patient isn't expecting it, preventing them from tensing up.

Sherlock yelps and turns ashen grey. "Couldn't you have stuck some of that local anesthestic in there, too?" he asks while looking a little green around the gills. Lydia, making use of her long experience in anticipating these things, grabs an emesis basin and passes it to Sherlock.

"The joint is small and it usually hurts a lot more to do a block on the entire finger than to just go ahead and reposition it," I explain apologetically as he retches bile into the basin. It's not uncommon for this to happen. The pain, the idea of a dislocated joint cracking back and the fast and short acting opioid often result in nausea. This happens even with stoic-in-the-face-of-pain, stubborn people like my flatmate.

I stand, my arms crossed, waiting for his spell of nausea to pass. Sherlock looks miserable and everything in me wants to wrap my arms around him, but under Lydia's watchful eyes I do no such thing. When the colour finally returns to Sherlock's cheeks and he no longer looks like he's at risk for passing out I clear my throat. "Now this next bit takes a bit more muscle. You'll want to lie down."

He opens his mouth to argue but I silence him with a stern look. Lydia knows what comes next and has already cut a wad of cast strips ready. I hold Sherlock's hand gently in mine and support his wrist with my other palm. Without Lydia present this would probably feel oddly intimate, this constant touch between us. I have treated friends, ex-girlfriends and family before and maintained my professional facade but with Sherlock the role slips and I don't even care. In our private life he's the one who leads, the brilliant one who has the answers. It's hard to challenge that arrangement. Here, in the world, I have the upper hand. I secretly relish being allowed to care for him now, since currently at home I have decided to abstain from all such things.

I miss this, being allowed to look after him. The realization hits me hard. What does that say about me, about our relationship? 

Lydia carefully slips a soft cotton tube sock onto Sherlock's hand. She then models the cast pieces onto it, cutting off corners with large scissors and making other adjustments to the shapes. Sherlock is looking up towards the ceiling, lost in thought. I grab a firm hold of his hand and his forearm. "Ready?" 

He doesn't reply.

"Sherlock? I swear I'll give you a pink cast unless I get a little co-operation here."

He turns his head, looking disinterested. I guess the alfentanil has kicked in. 

"Relax your arm," I tell him and once he obeys I pull his hand away from his forearm which I'm holding in place. I feel the bones snap into the right position. The kink in his wrist has disappeared as further proof that I've been successful. I nod to Lydia and she starts stacking the now wet plaster sheets onto Sherlock's arm and wrist. Together we mould them, making sure nothing will be pressing on the thumb or the elbow. 

Sherlock claims he doesn't care about the colour of the top layer but in the end picks out black from the selection I present to him. He wiggles his fingers experimentally after the whole cast is finished. I flex his elbow to see that there aren't any sharp edges that would chafe on his upper arm. Everything looks in order.

"I'm ordering another set of films to see that the bone is set properly. Also, you'll need a course of antibiotic tablets for the bite wounds. Even pet dog mouths are full of nasty bacteria. I'll bring you the prescription tonight."

"I can go home now?" he asks, yawning. He looks slightly lethargic. I realize it's the alfentanil. Who would have thought that a slightly upped dose would visibly affect him, considering his past drug use?

Past. A not so distant past. I realize that we never discussed his recent relapse beyond the one hasty argument we had right before he was wheeled into the OR. Maybe we don't have to. Maybe we do. I can't decide.

I rock back on my heels. "Actually, forget that." I hastily call Mike and tell him that I will be taking Sherlock home. My shift would have ended in an hour anyway. He says it's fine. He always says it's fine.

I scribble down a prescription and pass the form to Sherlock who stuffs it into his trouser pocket. I then take my pager and my white coat to the dressing room while Lydia sorts out discharge bureaucracy with a disinterested Sherlock.

We then wander down to radiology together. Sherlock gets his films done and I go through them right away. The fracture in his wrist is now nicely set. 

The fracture in our relationship, however, is far from gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two schools of thought on whether the reposition of finger dislocations requires local anesthetic - many do favor putting in a bit of it or even doing a proper finger block to make things easier for the patient. John is of the more brutal school of thought here, perhaps because he's used to simple and effective wartime solutions. Many patients come to ERs having already repositioned their own fingers...
> 
> In my country Entonox (laughing gas) is not available at A&E departments for small procedures but in the UK its use seems to be widespread.
> 
> A huge thanks goes to Emma221b for MedBritPicking this chapter.


	8. Skeletons in closets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John ponders the mistake he thinks he has made and Sherlock makes some more admissions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in time for Halloween - a new chapter for you lovelies. Happy holidays!

_**In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.  
\- Carlos Castaneda** _

 

During the cab ride home I idly check my phone for messages before realizing it's not likely that there would be any. 

The times of Mycroft texting me, inquiring about why Sherlock's name had (again) appeared in the patient records of some hospital, are now gone. It would be easy to be relieved by the increase of privacy in our lives, but on the other hand Mycroft was my last resort, too. When I couldn't find Sherlock, when I had a nagging feeling he might be in trouble, Mycroft is who I turned to. It was always somehow reassuring to hear the man's droll, calm tone on the other end of the phone line, assuring me that he would locate his brother in no time.

Now there's just me. It's frightening.

I glance at Sherlock as our cab passes the Baker street tube station. He's getting restless, fiddling with his cast, arranging and rearranging his rolled sleeves and tapping his fingers on the car door latch in a frantic staccato.

Realization dawns. I'd given him a hefty dose of a strong opiate at Barts, the last vestiges of which are probably now leaving his system. Admittedly I'd been a little preoccupied with taking in the whole scenario and perhaps not thought everything through as thoroughly as I should have. Still, his substance abuse history did cross my mind, which lead me to pick the shortest and fastest acting thing I could think of to keep its effects as short-lived as possible. The downside is that a fast-acting thing like that will give a bit of a buzz when it hits the system, a feeling which will be familiar to Sherlock and kick his receptors into begging for more. Had I picked any milder medication we would have had to wait a lot longer for it to take effect, and everything I had to do to his hand would still have been unacceptably painful. 

I can't take this up with Sherlock right now, not with the cabbie potentially listening in. The last attempt to discuss Sherlock's drug habit and his recent relapse in the presence of others had not gone down well. Granted he'd been anxious about the surgery back then which added to his disdain. As far as I know the dose he took about three weeks ago was a one-off. At least I hope so. Judging by his past behaviour and what happened to Mycroft this is probably not just a danger night - more of a danger week. 

The guilt of not realizing it was a danger night when he resorted to self-medication some months before hasn't exactly left me yet.

I hate seeing him in pain and even all the guidelines say that it's unethical not to alleviate the pain of a patient who has a history of illicit substance use just because you're afraid of the consequences. I did what I did because I had to. And it's my job to deal with the aftermath. Sherlock is likely to be having some cravings right now.

I pay as usual, we exit the cab and enter the building. Sherlock slides up the stairs quietly like a ghost. 

Once in the apartment, he strips off his bloodstained shirt and lets it fall down onto the sitting room floor. His trousers he then abandons on the floor of his bedroom and crawls into bed even though it's only 2 p.m.

I follow him and sit down on the edge of his bed. "How's --"

"Fine," he articulates sharply without letting me even finish the question. He carefully arranges the edge of his duvet under his armpits, looking rather reserved. 

I have other questions, too, but he won't like any of them any better. His eyes are fixed on me and his whole demeanour seems to signal that I'm trespassing.

I decide that the best approach would be to be brutally honest. It'll be over in a second and then he can sulk and I can leave. "Do you have anything hidden in the apartment?" 

He shakes his head. 

"On a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to--"

"Eight." His expression is calculated but not angry.

"Right." I push myself off the bed and stand up. 

I realize I desperately want reassurances, 'can you handle it', 'promise me you won't take anything', but I suspect he can't and won't offer me any. 

"It's sort of my fault," I say, "But I won't apologize for trying to make things easier for you. I know you don't mind a little pain, but still."

Sherlock now looks mostly tired. He kicks his sock down onto the floor from beneath the duvet. "I didn't expect it to be that bad. No need to apologize." He looks slightly embarrassed now and the edge is gone from his tone. 

I'm aware that it's these sorts of feelings and admissions that have lately been driving him up the wall. Still, he sought me out when injured instead of going somewhere else to get his injuries looked at. That's got to count for something. It doesn't mean that he's gotten over the things that have been bothering him lately, though.

"Will you--" I blurt out and then take a deep breath, "Come find me if it gets really bad?"

He turns his head to look out of the window and does not dignify me with an answer. 

 

 

 

He sleeps for five hours - sleeps, or at least stays in his bedroom. I type up a case for the blog, catch up on some articles for work, make myself an omelette and scribble on a sticky note to remind myself to take the rent check to Mrs Hudson once she gets home. 

At around seven in the evening I turn on the lights. Sherlock has the hearing of an owl so I don't want to disturb him with the television so I opt for a book instead. 

I manage only four pages until Sherlock emerges from his bedroom. He pads to the livingroom without a word and descends onto the sofa. Steepling his fingertips under his chin, he manages to keep still for at least half an hour, lost in thought before grabbing his phone and texting frantically.

"Case?" I ask without lifting my eyes from my novel. 

"Tying up loose ends on the Waldegrave thing."

"Oh," I reply, frowning. I can feel his eyes on me and when I look up his gaze narrows but he returns his attention to his phone.

"How's your hand?" I ask. 

He sighs, sounding as put-upon as he always does when inconvenienced by the needs of The Transport. "Fine. Throbbing."

"You need to take your antibiotics."

"I'm aware."

As pathetic as this discussion is, it's one of the most amicable we've had during the recent days. 

He then goes to the kitchen to make tea, which is a rare occurrence. Usually he expects me or Mrs Hudson to make it or for it to somehow materialize out of thin air.

I feign disinterest as he digs around the cabinet above the sink to find his amoxicillin and clavulanic acid tablets. To my surprise he also takes his iron supplement tablet.

 

 

 

I groan when the sound of a text message wakes me up at around 2 a.m. Is it simply impossible to enjoy a steady course of full-night's sleep in this house?

Judging by the distant sound of television, Mrs Hudson is up for some reason as well.

I tap my fingers around the bedside table for my phone in the darkness. 

IN NEED OF MEDICAL ASSESSMENT. SH

As ridiculous as texting Sherlock is when he's as close as downstairs, I indulge. YOU COULD HAVE JUST COME UPSTAIRS.

A thought occurs - is he in too bad a shape to handle the stairs? I practically fly out of bed without waiting for his reply and run down the stairs.

I huff with annoyance when I spot him on the sofa, seemingly fine. "Well, what?" I ask, crossing my arms, which does little to shield me from the nightly draft in the flat.

He sits up. The only light in the room is the glow from the television but it's bright enough to notice his forehead looks a bit clammy and he's shivering.

My annoyance disappears, replaced by several medical worst-case scenarios running through my head.

I sit down next to him and press the back of my hand onto his forehead. "You're warm." His eyes glisten a bit, too. "Any headache? Neck pain? Nausea?" If he's showing even the slightest sign of potential central nervous system infection, it's off to King's College A&E for us. I'll handcuff him and drag him there kicking and screaming if need be. It's still quite early days after his surgery.

He shakes his head. "None of those. Just this," he says, the fingers of his healthy hand reaching to his armpit on the side of the cast. He's feeling around for something and the sash of his dressing gown gets a bit loose, revealing his pale torso.

"Let me," I tell him and pry away his fingers. I think I know what he's looking for. He lifts his arm and I gently prod around to feel his lymph nodes. They seem slightly enlarged but not too big or sore. I run my fingers across his neck as well, but none of those areas seem to contain anything out of the ordinary.

"It's not uncommon after a big bite wound to get a slight fever and enlarged lymph nodes. As long as it doesn't get any worse than this I think you'll be fine as long as you keep up with the antibiotics." I let my hand slide down his cast to his fingers, which are against his knee, and leave my palm gently pressed on top of them.

He lets out a breath I don't think he was even holding, and slams shut his laptop that has been positioned onto a pile of books on the coffee table. "Good, that's... Good, really. Would prefer to avoid a Capnocytophaga meningitis."

He had been genuinely worried. And apparently Googling things again, which we had agreed was not good for him. The last time he did that he drove himself into a panic attack. 

For me it is probably so much easier to think that the aneurysm thing is done and gone. For Sherlock, is still probably often lingers in his thoughts. He will likely worry until he's had his control MRI at the six-month mark. For him, the danger isn't over yet. Not in my mind completely either, but it must be very different when it's you who has to live with that Damocles' sword all the time.

"You could take some ibuprofein and go to bed, you know," I suggest gently, "Why didn't you come and wake me up?"

He blinks. "I didn't want to intrude."

"When it's about your health, you're always allowed," I say, smiling, until I realize the hidden connotation. When it's about something else than his health, is he allowed to do the same?

I feel like I missed some opportunity here but I have no idea how to fix it. Help me out, here, Sherlock. Give me a sign.

"What about the... other thing?" In work situations I would never be so vague about asking a drug user about cravings or withdrawal symptoms but this is Sherlock, and if cornered he will lash out and run.

"Pretty much back to baseline now. You need not concern yourself with it," he tells me, clearly trying hard to sound reassuring.

He leans his elbows on his knees, focusing on BBC news. He never watches the news. 

My hand slides off his knee. Maybe I'm just tired and somehow emotional but the cutting off of our physical contact almost hurts. I was trying to make a connection here. My remark about proper reasons to enter my bedroom must've been analyzed and interpreted exactly as I'd hoped it wouldn't be.

I lean back on the sofa to give him some space. 

He's never had any qualms about entering my bedroom before. What's changed? 

I need at least a working hypothesis. Sherlock loves correcting me so let's just throw something in the air and see what gives.

"Bad memories?"

He turns towards me, looking younger and more tired than usual. "Explain."

"You didn't want to go to King's College because of the surgery. And you didn't want a repeat of the scene when you woke me up on the night I took you to A&E?" 

His expression is a mixture of so many things. It's like he has several possible answers and doesn't know which one to pick.

Oh my dear strange friend. 

He's been through so much. 

He turns back to the television, pretending to be interested in a coup in Swaziland.

I wonder if it's wrong what I'm doing here, keeping my hopes up of being able to make one more change in his life in the midst of all this other drama. A change in our relationship. 

All I know is what I want - to go back to way things were right after his surgery, when we were so much closer and nothing was this awkward. I also want to take a step further and see what awaits beyond the limits of friendship. All the signs are there that he might want that as well, as far as my deductive powers can tell me. Or have I interpreted him so wrong? I refuse to believe that. We finish each other's sentences, practically, and everyone else has been convinced of our involvement right from the start. 

In all honesty, I'm a bit tired thinking so carefully about what Sherlock might want. I want to be able to want things, too.

"I haven't been sleeping," Sherlock admits suddenly, shaking me out of my reverie.

I rearrange the throw pillows and cough as a cloud of dust is flung in the air. One of these days one of us will have to pick up the vacuum cleaner. "That's normal, considering all that's been going on and the fact that it's you." I can't help remembering a night not so long ago, when he ended up sleeping next to me in my bed after having a meltdown before the surgery. He fell asleep with my palm on his shoulder. In the morning his side of the bed was empty but warm, a faint smell of sweat and his aftershave still lingering. The realization that I had been terribly disappointed to find him gone before I'd woken up had actually rattled me a bit back then - it was irrefutable evidence that something in me had already decided 'just best friends' wasn't going to cut it anymore. Still, with the surgery coming up and everything in an upheaval I had shoved those feelings back in the proverbial closet.

"Can I help?" I ask.

He opens his mouth as if he's about to say something, looking very, very nervous and hopeful. Is he remembering the same night as me?

Then he blinks, twice and my heart sinks as I can practically see it on his face how his defences are coming back up. He decidedly shuts his mouth and his gaze darts back to the television screen.

"You can return to bed. I'll inform you of any changes," he says. He grabs the remote and starts flicking through channels.

I've been dismissed. 

 

 

 

Lestrade calls with another case, which occupies us for the better part of the next day. Sherlock looks a bit worn throughout. I don't think he slept at all. His temperature is bordering on normal in the morning and he feels fine - at least that's what he tells me. 

At the crime scene, I stand back while Sherlock does his thing. Anderson hovers nearby, expectant. He plucks up the courage to chide Sherlock about touching the edge of a bloodstained drawer with his bare fingers instead of a glove. Sherlock replies with his usual vitriol while not even moving his gaze from the old wardrobe where the skeletal remains of the murder victim have been found. 

I know he's tired because he's not spouting his theories with his usual enthusiasm. 

Anderson seems to have picked up on this. He turns to face me, arms crossed. The man looks like a penguin in his hooded, white plastic overalls.

Everything has gone quite well with the Yard lately. Sherlock's two-month hiatus of taking cases has effectively eliminated evidence of his surgery. His hair is now back to its curly glory, hiding his scar. Still, his hospitalization and subsequent surgery ended up in the press during his sick leave despite Mycroft's best efforts of limiting media coverage. All it required was one greedy fellow patient to call in the news that London's most famous detective was under the weather. The Yarders thus know some of what has transpired, but luckily noone has made any remarks about it. Yet. 

Anderson regards Sherlock with a disdainful look. "Sure he's in working condition yet, Watson? For your sake I hope they at least tried to put in the screws he was missing before," he comments dryly.

Before what he's said even registers properly, I've grabbed him by his throat and shoved him against a nearby wall. He's screaming bloody murder and Lestrade barges in to pull me off of the man. I scoff and straighten my coat.

Anderson is rubbing his neck and mumbling something about contaminating a crime scene and Lestrade is standing next to me, his mouth an angry line.

Sherlock stands by the wardrobe, surveying the scene. Usually, he'd probably be amused, the edge of his mouth in a slightly upwards curve in a knowing smile - I've always felt like he has a bit of a penchant for me defending his honour. This time, however, there is no fondness in his expression. None at all.

With sharp, calculated movements, he puts away his magnifying glass and directs his piercing gaze at me instead of the logical target of Philip Anderson.

"Leash your fucking guard dog, Holmes," Anderson half-scoffs, half coughs and retreats to the adjoining room. 

Lestrade retreats as Sherlock takes a step closer to me.

"John?" He demands an answer, but I'm not really sure what the question here is. 

"What the hell--" He asks, emphasizing every word, "Are you doing?"

I have to admit he's intimidating when he towers over me like that.

"Or let me rephrase. What the hell do you want from me, John Watson?" His eyes are blazing with fury and I'm still confused. Apparently he is not impressed by my gesture. 

Not impressed by the way in which I'd elected to fight his battle for him as though he wasn't capable himself? 

Not impressed by my chivalrous but unfornately somewhat protective impulses?

This is not the time or the place for this. All eyes are on us. I swallow and point towards the skeleton that is being carefully removed from the closet by two forensic technicians. "I want you to solve this."

"That's all?" He asks.

I don't have an answer. I'm sorry, Sherlock, but I don't know how to do this. Any of this. Lately it seems that whatever I do, it backfires. I'm supposed to be there for him but at the same time leave him to his own devices. 

I think I'm supposed to say it out loud, this thing between us, but I can't just do it at a goddamned crime scene. What do _you_ want from me, Sherlock Holmes?

"Yeah," I manage, and bite my tongue so hard I taste blood. Well done, Watson, very fucking eloquent.

"Very well," he says carefully and returns to trying to pry out some floorboards.

I've said the wrong thing, again.


	9. Enemy at the gates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is this love, or is it addiction? Or a little bit of both?

We return home as the sun is setting. Sherlock hasn't talked much. He doesn't seem hostile, just thoughtful. Sad, somehow.

I take a shower to get the stench of the mouldy murder house from my clothes. When I leave the bathroom Sherlock appears from his room, impeccably dressed in a pair of rather form-fitting trousers and that one plum-coloured shirt that's almost too tight. He's running a comb through his hair with his left, uncast hand while he sets his mobile on the kitchen table and walks to the bathroom.

"Hey," I say because what else, really. I can venture a guess what he would reply to a polite inquiry about his health. 'Sod off', probably.

Sometimes living with him is like living with a teenager. I stiffen a yawn and listen to the sounds of the bathroom tap running and Sherlock rumbling around the cabinet above the basin. Then his mobile comes to life on the table as he gets a text.

I fetch the phone and take it to him - he's left the bathroom door open. I can't resist taking a glance at the screen before I pass it to him. 

CLOS MAGGIORE AT EIGHT? A text message reads. I don't scroll down to see who it's from.

I lean on the doorframe. "You're not going out, are you?"

Sherlock scrutinizes his chin in the mirror, probably trying to gauge whether he needs a shave. "Waldegrave texted earlier. Suggested an evening out to get my mind off things," he says casually and I try not to gape.

The first thing that occurs to me is that the words "mind" and "off" do not fit any sentence ever about Sherlock.

The second thing is that he's going out on a date. 

Sherlock. On a date.

Something shifts. Snaps. I've had it with walking on eggshells. I'm about to speak my mind and it's not like things could get worse, right?

"If you want to assert your independence by making idiotic decisions then be my guest!" I declare.

He actually flinches. Maybe I said that a little bit more loudly than I intended. His gaze is now on me, piercing as ever.

"And what sort of idiotic decision, pray tell, am I making here?" His tone is challenging, taunting. He arranges his shirt sleeve around his cast. It only barely fits.

I hate how I have to look slightly upwards to meet his gaze.

"You're tired, you were ill yesterday and the surgery was so recent there's still a risk of meningitis if the stuff from the bite gets properly into your bloodstream. Not to mention that you might still be tempted to get a fix if you go somewhere were there's a chance to score since you've been upset lately." Every word is at least partially true, but I wonder if he can tell this isn't the entire truth. After all, Sherlock is basically a human lie detector. Yes, I'm skirting the issue here a bit but surely he can deduce that I'm grasping at straws because I just don't want him to go?

He breaks the eye contact. "We'll only be having dinner. Afterwards maybe drinks somewhere. Doesn't sound all that taxing or hazardous. I'm sure you know the drill better than I," he suggest and starts applying some sort of expensive goop to his curls which have now been combed into submission.

Sherlock. On a date. The extent to which the concept bothers me speaks volumes. I feel like there's so many things I should probably say out loud right this moment but I'm not sure he'd want to listen. I want to kick myself for all this procrastination and my apprehension at how to handle a relationship with not just a man, but this man in particular. A proper relationship.

"You do know it's a date you're going on?" I say and he scoffs.

"Even though I do not have as much experience in these matters as you do, I am not completely oblivious."

He digs out a toothbrush. "Why don't you want me to see where this could go?" he asks, his tone strangely light, mockingly oblivious on purpose. 

He knows. The sodding git _knows_ but he wants me to bloody say it. He wants me to reveal my hand. 

He wants to know why have I been allowed to parade around various women for years but he's not allowed one date. He wants to know why we hover at the precipice but never take the plunge. 

Why do I have the feeling that the way things have been going lately is my fault somehow? 

Is he as scared as I am?

I feel like standing on a tightrope between skyscrapers. Proceeding forward is risky but backtracking might be even more dangerous.

Some time ago I stopped correcting people when they assumed we weren't a couple. They never believed me anyway. Before Dartmoor the assumptions were just a nuisance, something I could shrug off with ease, but in Baskerville I saw for the first time the shadow that moved across Sherlock's expression when I vehemently insisted that we were not together that way.

'I'm not gay' - I could never be attracted to you?

'We're not together' - I don't want you?

'Why wouldn't we need separate bedrooms'? - the thought of being with you could never even cross my mind, it's so outlandish?

I've been practically telling Sherlock for years that the concept of wanting him in that way abhors me and I wish to ridicule the very notion.

I am so, so sorry that it took me this long to see what it was doing to him. He is very good at hiding how he feels but I've learned to read him to some extent.

I've probably wounded the man. Devastated him. 

Is it so surprising, then, that he might actually consider looking elsewhere after realizing that he still has a chance to find someone, while Mycroft doesn't? 

Sherlock is standing in front of me now, wanting to get out of the bathroom. "Sorry," I blurt out and let him pass. On his way to the kitchen he turns and I realize I never answered his inquiry.

"Why, John? Why shouldn't I go?" he asks again, and he no longer sounds like he's taunting me. 

Until I can actually get a word in, Sherlock strides into the kitchen, grabs his mobile and his coat and opens the front door. I've followed him to the foyer without even realizing.

"Because I love you, you idiot," I reply resignedly but Sherlock is already out the door.

 

 

 

The fridge door rattles on its hinges as I bang it shut. I then stand in the kitchen, milk carton in one hand, the other clenched into a fist, shaking with something I can't even properly recognize.

I don't know what makes me more furious, him or me. Maybe both.

I bang the milk on the table and pick up a leather glove that someone has dropped on the floor. I fling it against the wall. It's not nearly hard enough to make a satisfying thud. The yellow smiley face painted on the living room wallpaper looks like it's making fun of me. 

I want to hail a taxi and follow Sherlock, kidnap him from his date and bring him home. It's like there's an invisible cord between us that's being stretched up to the point of snapping. 

Goddamned Carrington Waldegrave. If he hurts Sherlock I will end him. I swear I will. The conviction with which this thought hits me is frightening. 

I would kill for him. I _have_ already killed for him.

Is this love, or is it addiction? Or a little bit of both? 

I feel a bit like I did weeks ago at the hospital, when I was left alone in Sherlock's hospital room as he'd just been wheeled to the OR. So painfully deprived of him. 

'I don't need you to take his place', Sherlock had said. I never even tried to. Why does he keep mistaking what I feel for him for all these other things, these ulterior motives? Does he have to be so hung up on fighting tooth-and-nail against my and everyone else's perceived need to control him? 

Where is the line between control and wanting the best for him? He wants us to meet on even ground and he's not convinced it's possible. And apparently, that's a lot more important than what I actually feel for him.

I slump down onto my armchair. Sherlock has piled all the throw pillows into it. I frantically claw them out from beneth me and fling them away, not caring about where they land.

I don't know what to do. I don't have the energy to be the rational one for much longer.

Something claws at my insides when I think about the two of them together. Waldegrave doesn't know him, doesn't know how to handle the delicate cyclone that is Sherlock.

I want to absorb him into my cells. All of him. The intensity of my feelings is constricting my chest. It isn't nice, pleasant, romantic or gentlemanlike. It's raw and violent and it's consuming me whole.

Still, I can't exactly chase him down and drag him back kicking and screaming. He needs to meet me halfway. It's going to drive me insane, not knowing if that's ever going to happen.

I can't sit here any longer lest I lose my mind. I stand up, grab the rent check from the table and run downstairs.

Mrs Hudson never locks the door to her apartment when we're at home. I find her in the kitchen, doing a crossword. I manage a polite smile as I pass her the check. She takes one long look at me and puts the kettle on.

These sorts of rituals are reassuring. I have to admit I feel a little better when I receive a warm cup in my hands. Soon a tiny glass filled to the brim with cherry brandy appears as well.

I hate cherry brandy, but I hate this rattled feeling even more. I down the sickly sweet liquid. God bless Mrs Hudson.

She beams and settles down into a chair. "You looked like you needed that."

"God, yes," I tell her but decline a second helping.

"Sherlock not home, then?" she asks casually, but I know she's trying to entice the whole story out of me. It's half concern and half curiosity.

"He's out with a client."

"Oh," Mrs Hudson says. 

What is it with this woman that she has the knack to coax truths out of me without even asking?

"On a date", I venture further, "With Carrington Waldegrave," I add, letting the letters of his name roll off my tongue like an alien language. Like a curse word.

Come home, Sherlock. Stop this nonsense.

Mrs Hudson snaps a biscuit in half. "He's that singer chap who's been in a papers, isn't he? Sherlock and Carrington. Nice ring to it, don't you think. But John, _really_," she chides and I feel like I'm being berated by the headmistress. 

I fucked up. I really did. And I don't even know at which point the weight on the scales shifted. At which point Sherlock decided to either give up on me or decide that I wasn't conducive to him living his life the way he wants.

The brandy has melted some of my anxiety, making everything burn a little less. Just a little, though.

After tea, there's telly. We settle on game show after I say no to a nature documentary. After the show ends it's quite evident Mrs Hudson wants to head to bed so I drag myself back upstairs. 

I'm about to switch off the kitchen lights when my phone rings. Unknown number. 

"Hello?" I say warily, expecting a prank caller, Mummy Holmes, Moriarty, a random bomb threat or a potential client. Living with Sherlock, you never know.

Out of all possible human beings on the planet, I never expected the caller to be Waldegrave.

"John Watson?" he asks politely.

"Yes." I resist the urge to inquire what terrible thing Sherlock has done now. He used to wreck my dates so I guess he now must've wrecked his own, too.

"This is kind of awkward, but--" 

No shit, Carrington. 

"--I just wanted to make sure nothing bad had happened to him."

I frown and instinctively grab hold of the phone tighter. "What do you mean?"

Waldegrave sounds a little embarrassed when he tells me that Sherlock never made an appearance at the restaurant. I tell him that to my knowledge the man left Baker Street in one piece with the intention of showing up.

My insides no longer twist so much with jealousy but worry. This must be a danger night. It's been a danger month, frankly. If Sherlock's not with me and not with Waldegrave, either... I send a silent plea to the heavens that Sherlock is not about to score. But what else could he be doing that he needed to ditch both of us for?

"It seems that I've been stood up by the great detective, then," Waldegrave jokes surprisingly gracefully and I actually sympathize a bit with the man.

"Happens to the best of us," I manage surprisingly jovially and he chuckles. Part of me still wants to put him in his place, wants to tell him that it's an honour to be destroyed by Sherlock Holmes. 

"Very well, then. Apologies for interfering with your evening, John. Take care," the voice at the other end of the line says. I reply with the usual niceties and we end the call.

I scramble to the foyer to grab the piece of paper from my coat pocket. Then I rush to my laptop but as I'm about to flip open the cover my hands freeze. 

What am I doing?

Do I really want to prove Sherlock right, that I'm about to take on what Mycroft thought was a brotherly thing to do but what clearly made Sherlock feel trapped? To watch him, track him, invade his privacy, not trust him?

Is it true what Sherlock claimed, that I have no confidence in him making it on his own?

Sherlock knows London and can defend himself. I need to lay the hell off. The fact that he decided against spending the evening with Waldegrave does not equal being kidnapped by Moriarty or ending up in a ditch with whatever junk he's managed to buy pounding through his veins.

I realize I'm still holding the incriminating piece of paper between my fingers. I let it fall to the floor.

I need another drink if I'm to resist the urge to throw on my coat and upend the entire city in search of Sherlock Holmes.

 

 

Three hours and four shots of whiskey later, I stand up, dust my trousers and dig out my phone from my coat pocket. 

I don't feel drunk. Instead my head feels clearer than for a long time. 

It's time to make a gambit. 

I type a text, fingers slightly shaking from the whiskey and the realization that the words I am about to type will likely dictate the course of my entire remaining life.

I AM NOT MYCROFT. AND I AM MOST CERTAINLY NOT VICTOR. COME HOME TO ME.

I receive no reply.


	10. How we begin

_But you had to have him, and so you did_  
_Some things you let go in order to live_  
_\- Florence Welch_

 

At two in the morning, I'm in bed. I don't even hope for sleep, aware that I'm too riled up. I'm beyond tired, running on adrenaline and whatever else my body is cooking up into this terrible cocktail of fear and anger.

Fear that he won't come home. Fear that he will, and that we will continue this stalemate until kingdom come. Fear that he's currently drugged up to his eyeballs in some hovel in Shoreditch, waiting for me to swoop in.

I toss and turn, sheets coming loose at the corners. Flashes of light travel across the ceiling as the occasional car drives by. I hear footsteps from some apartment above ours. Rain is hitting the pavement outside.

I'm on edge. This feels hatefully close to the way I felt during those long, lonely nights in that abysmal bedsit after I'd just returned from Afghanistan.

I close my eyes, trying to will my exhausted body to submission. 

Suddenly a key turns in the lock. 

My heart leaps into a series of erratic beats. It feels like the whole organ is making flips towards my throat. It feels like it's preparing for either joy or battle. Perhaps both.

I should feel peaceful, relieved, happy now that he's come home. 'My body is betraying me', Sherlock complained once, and I now know what he meant.

There's a thump which I deduce is Sherlock's coat hitting the foyer floor. 

Footsteps coming up the stairs. Why up the stairs since there's nothing here but my bedroom?

There's no hesitation in his step, no falter in the rhythm.

He hasn't turned on the hallway light. The only sign of the door to my bedroom opening is the sound of the hinges quietly creaking.

I should sit up, say something but I'm frozen in place. 

Sherlock walks into the room. I can only make out parts of his silhouette in the darkness. The sheets at the end of the bed rustle and I feel the mattress sink as he sits down. I still can't see anything in the darkness. 

The duvet is lifted away me and the hairs on my arms stand up because of the draft.

Sherlock leans forward in the darkness, descending on me like a cloud. He braces his non-cast arm onto the mattress. I quickly sit up before I'm completely covered by his body. 

My mind is reeling, dividing in two. The reasonable John Watson in me is saying I need to stop this, stop what's happening because it might not be real, we need to talk first, it might just be a drug-induced mind game or something else that might ruin everything and make Sherlock very, very embarrassed come tomorrow morning. The other half of me screams yes, yes, a thousand times yes. 

Hot breath ghosts on my clavicle as he positions himself on my thighs, straddling me. 

Something raw lightly scrapes my right thigh. It must be his cast. Bony fingers grab hold on my hipbones as he adjusts his position. 

My heartbeat pounds in my ears and my breathing has gone ragged. So has Sherlock's. It is both unsettling and so, so arousing, the fact that I can only feel and hear him without seeing the expression on his face. He seems determined and slightly apprehensive at the same time but not backing down. 

Sherlock nevers backs down from anything he has set his mind to.

He's hard. The feeling of him is unmistakable against my now bare stomach. He has likely noticed the evidence of my similar predicament. 

I feel like I've jumped off a cliff and this is the moment of anticipation before plunging into the icy waters. I would've appreciated a little warning here, a little foreplay perhaps before suddenly finding Sherlock Holmes snaking his way under my bedsheets.

Then I realize that this is actually the foreplay. My head spins.

I draw in a breath and then oh sweet fucking hell freezing over his mouth is on mine, his left hand grabbing my shoulder like there's no tomorrow.

There's alarm bells going off so loud that they're finally overcoming the desire to just let go and jump into this with reckless abandon. My fingers curl into the sheets as I summon whatever determination I have left.

It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life to gently grab hold of Sherlock's shoulders and gently push him away. 

There are things that need to be sorted out before all of this can happen. Before all of this _will_ happen. 

He slides off from my lap to kneel next to me. 

"Sherlock." I'm embarrassingly hoarse, but what did I expect, really. 

The conversation that will now follow will probably be mortifying. There's nothing I could possibly say that wouldn't sound like a rejection to some extent. He needs to let me explain. To reassure him.

At least he hasn't left. Yet.

I hear him draw in another ragged breath. He's rarely this quiet. I've somehow made Sherlock Holmes speechless. Relish the thought.

I need to be able to see him. I switch on the lamp on my bedside table and positively gape.

This is Sherlock Holmes, undone. His clothes are a mess, his face flush, his lids half-closed. Gone is his usual hawk-like focus and air of superiority. His trousers are doing a lousy job hiding his state of arousal.

"Why didn't you let me continue?" he asks quietly, avoiding my gaze. He has chosen his pronoun carefully. 'Me', not 'us. He assumes I don't want any of this, despite all the evidence to the contrary he has at his disposal right now. 

This situation requires defusing, fast. 

I swallow. Here we go then. "I needed to make sure this wasn't because you had taken something, that it wasn't an experiment for a case, some other sort of a test and that you weren't running into it head-first before actually being ready for it."

He looks indignant now. "You still don't think I'm capable of making decisions for myself."

"I've no doubt you're capable but you don't always think very carefully about the consequences. You tend to rush into things, just admit it."

He rolls his eyes. "We've lived together for two years. I wouldn't actually call this rushing into things."

"I'm not worried about your intentions. It's your timing that's a little --" I think I'm blathering. 

He gently runs his fingers along the stubble on my chin and his expression is a bit sad. I realize I need to signal that I'm in this with him, not sending him away. I take hold of his hand and give the fingertips a kiss. His breath hitches. He's about to lift his right hand to touch my face but then he remembers the cast. He lets his hands retreat back into his lap. His movements are careful, a little shy even.

I can't wait to witness him lose himself completely, if and when we take this further. The thought is highly distracting.

"I worried. Where did you even go tonight?" I ask.

He pulls up his sleeves and presents the crooks of his arms. "I assure you--"

I press his arms down and pull the duvet up to my chest because I'm getting cold, hoping he won't take it as a sign that I'm trying to get away from him.

"I trust you," I tell him and he nods. 

"I just walked. Ended up in Grove park. Sat on a bench, scared off an exhibitionist."

I laugh and he smiles, too.

Maybe we should talk about this some more. After all, as far as I know this is as far as he's gone with anyone and this is definitely as far as I've ever gone with a man.

On the other hand, talk is all we've managed to do for the past two years. 

Sherlock is right. I need to let him make his own decisions.

I lean forward and grab the front of his shirt into my palms a little harsher than necessary but I need to get my point across. As I lean in the last few centimetres to kiss him he takes my cue and we practically crash into each other. 

There's a short moment of trying to find a good position but after that, I'm completely lost. Oblivious to anything but the feeling of him, of us. Whatever worry I may have had of whether this would feel as good as I'd suspected it would evaporates. This is better than I dreamed it would be. So much better. 

It's a bit like coming home, really. I stifle a giddy laugh - it's ridiculous, the amount of time I'd spent thinking about how strange this would probably be, doing this with a bloke. Turns out there's nothing to it, really.

"Why did it take so long to get here," I muse.

He repositions himself, leans forward so that I'm pressed between him and the headboard of the bed. My hands snake around his waist and hold on for dear life. I kiss him again and rake my fingertips along the back of his head. He lets out a half-moan, half-sigh and melts against me.

After what only seems like a blink but must've been several minutes our lips part and Sherlock presses his cheek againt my shoulder.

"You're an idiot," he whispers and licks my ear. For a virgin he's awfully forward. 

"You are, too," I counter and circle my arms around his neck. Somehow we've ended up with him sitting on my lap again. "My idiot."

He snakes his arms around my neck. I reach between us and start unbuttoning his shirt. I suddenly want nothing between us, not even thin fabric. While I fumble with his buttons - why are there so many? - I wonder how I could ever have doubted whether he wanted this or not. Sherlock seems to be trying to run his fingers across every inch of my chest, memorizing every little detail. 

He stretches out his arm and I unbutton his sleeve as well because his cast won't fit through otherwise. After we've released both his arms from that ridiculous garment I toss it unceremoniously on the floor and then tug Sherlock closer.

I could get drunk on this, just his skin on mine.

My idiot indeed.

"Waldegrave called to inquire where you'd disappeared," I tease and he actually blushes. I'm never letting him out of this room again. "What I really wanted to tell him is that you got a better offer."

Instead of merely straddling me he positions himself so that his legs reach around my waist. It would be physically impossible for us to be any closer to one another. 

Sherlock tries to reach for the lamp switch but I stop him. I want to see him. All of him.

"At the pool. You'd nearly been blown to bits by a madman and the first thing you comment on is that people might talk if they'd seen me take your coat off? Why would you say such a thing? " he asks quietly.

A fair question. 

To be honest, it had been a bit of a panic reaction. The thing that was is peculiar and infuriating about Moriarty is that unlike most other human beings, he is capable of impressing Sherlock - a feat I had only managed once before that moment at the pool. I think I had impressed Sherlock with my marksmanship during the cabbie case and I had been hoping that I could manage to repeat such a feat.

Then in waltzes this Westwood-clad clown, and suddenly Sherlock pays attention to little else.

Until the moment he saw me wearing the bomb vest, that is. Then and there, everything changed. I know it, he knows it and Moriarty knows it. It was the moment Sherlock's humanity got the better of him. The moment that his feelings for me got the better of him.

I rake my fingers through his hair again. When my forefinger finds his surgical scar he tries to pull away in protest but I refuse to let him. He relaxes back into my touch. I know he hates the damned thing but it's part of us, part of what we've been through. 

Sherlock never lets me off easy. It's time to return the favour. "Use those brain cells. Why do you think I said such a thing?" 

I feel his warm breath in my ear. "Jealous," he whispers.

He's not wrong.

His attention then turns to the scar on my shoulder, now half-visible from under the duvet. "May I?" he asks. I'm about to tell him I'd rather he not - the whole area is rather sensitive, even light touch often registers as pain, but then I realize I need to give this to him. To trust him. Tonight we're cataloguing our battle wounds, sharing parts of our lives that before this were hidden. I need to let him in. 

I nod and he runs his finger across the scar, circling around the raised edges. The nerve endings discharge but it's not just pain, it's somehow surprisingly arousing. He presses his lips onto the scar and I can't help but loll my head back. I press my palms onto his shoulder blades and pull him close. 

We descend onto the bed and he untangles his legs from behind me in the process. We end up facing one another. His left hand is still constantly moving, cataloguing me, light feathery touches everywhere. He hasn't dared to venture below my waist yet.

He made his move tonight with a confidence I wish I'd had during my first fumbling experiments with girls back in my late teens. A confidence I wish I'd had to tell him that this is what I want. I realize he's probably been imagining all of this as long as I have. And now we're finally both ready.

With the women who've flitted through my life, I've always had to be careful. Always the gentleman. Whatever darkness there is in me, it has only been allowed to come out momentarily in the throes of passion to be soothed by the languid hugs and gentle kisses of the afterburn. 

Not this time. This time, I can give all of me. He can handle it.

He's looking at me, frowning, perhaps trying to measure the depth of my conviction to actually follow through with everything. "John," he says quietly and I don't think I've heard anything lovelier.

When I look up to meet his gaze I realize that even though parts of what is about to happen will be quite knew and require some figuring out from the both of us, Sherlock is not afraid. I am afraid of him, a little bit. I'm afraid of what it'll be like to be the object of his desire. Will he surrender or take over? Or both? What will I do? 

I need to rise up to the challenge.

We're not brothers in arms anymore. 

We're lovers.


	11. The things that define us

_It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death._  
_\- Thomas Mann_

 

Our coats flap in the brisk wind as we wander down the paths of St Peter's Cemetery. Sherlock is reading aloud names from gravestones while we walk. He points out that nobody famous is from Woodmansterne. I remind him that there's a very famous consulting detective who's native to this village.

We pause in front of the newest of the graves in this old churchyard. It's Mycroft's. The ornamental flowers left by the mourners now look withered and sad. The grave has been covered with fresh dirt and the headstone looks painfully new.

I bite my lip. During the past week, we've been discussing family. Expectations. Responsibilities. Sherlock has admitted to worrying that his parents now might expect more of him now that he's their only surviving child. To take care of them. Not to get into trouble.

He admitted to being frustrated because he can't seem to let go of certain things in the past. I made him a promise not to fuss over him too much. He promised to let me indulge in worrying about him every once in awhile. From Sherlock that's a big thing.

This thing with Waldegrave I will probably never get. A test of some sorts, an experiment? Maybe he was curious, flattered or both. Or perhaps it was a way to get me to break this long-term status quo of ours relationship-wise. That would be a very, very Sherlock way in which to manipulate others to do what he wants. Or maybe he doesn't know himself. Maybe he needed to make sure I was not a filler of voids of some kind, a replacement. That his sudden wish to take this leap with me was not borne out of illness or grief. 

Maybe I needed to know that, too.

"We are not our parents. We're not our childhood. We can choose not to let our past define our lives," I tell him.

My thoughts float to another churchyard in Chelmsford where my parents are buried. I rarely visit. Harry is supposed to look after their graves. She's probably neglecting it. She has even more of a grudge to carry than me.

He gives me a sideways glance. "Are you trying to claim you never let your childhood affect your choice of vocation? Trying to save people, sometimes from themselves?"

I have shared with him the story of my childhood - the drinking, Mum's mental health issues, the two years spent in foster homes, Dad beating up Harry when he discovered she wasn't 'like all the decent girls'. I told Sherlock of how I'd decided not to let all that baggage ruin my relationships, how I decided to believe that real love and romance and happiness could exist instead of this ugly thing my parents had referred to as love and marriage.

"You can turn bad stuff into good things," I tell him. The wind is biting into my neck and I pull up my collars. Sherlock's are already upturned. 

"You think I should think fondly of Mycroft." He seems to notice the remains of his calla lilies leaning onto the gravestone and frowns but doesn't say anything. 

"I can't tell you to do that. Only you can decide to do so. I just hope you won't let that stuff cloud your judgement again. Keep you from getting the things you want because you think everyone's agenda is to keep you on a leash. I don't think Mycroft did the things he did out of spite. I think he was, in his weird way, just trying to look after you."

"You think I'm making the right decision about the inheritance?" he asks. He told me last night he's decided to accept it.

"He'd want you to have it. He's still trying to make things easier for you. Let him."

Sherlock looks out into the distance, over the hedges and the now brownish lawns. 

"Do you miss your parents?" he asks, looking at the gravestone now.

"They're my folks. Yeah, I miss them like hell. My life is a lot better without them but I miss them. Blood thicker than water and all that."

He looks thoughtful. He's likely still thinking about Mycroft. Sherrinford too, probably. He's lost so much. We both have.

I pluck up the courage to step closer to Sherrinford's grave. Sherlock lets out a breath and joins me in front of the weather-worn, small stone.

Sherlock leans down to touch it with his forefinger. It's a strange gesture from a man who by reputation detests sentiment, but a completely natural one from the Sherlock that I have now learned to know. 

"When we were little I heard a skein of cranes out in the fields for the first time. Mycroft told me they were the souls of the dead coming to collect all stupid litle naughty boys, of which i was of course the worst," he says with a bitter smile and lets out a hollow laugh. His left hand flies up to his eye as he hastily wipes away any moisture threatening to ruin his composure.

I snake the fingers of my left hand into his right hand. He gives them a slight squeeze and I expect him to gently pull his hand away. He doesn't.

To an outsider it might look like it's us like we've always been, the two best friends with strangely non-existent personal boundaries. 

It's not like that anymore. Everything is different. We're different.

"Big brothers, eh? I once teased Harry so much she punched me in the gut. She had a meaner right hook at age six than me at age ten."

Sherlock turns to look at me with this one particular expression that he awards me with when I manage to amuse or impress him. His eyes linger on me, appraising. "You stare at me more than you used to."

"And?"

"Just an observation," he replies, the edge of his lip curling up slightly.

I almost can't believe he's mine now. Or that he's been mine for a long time already. 

I look at him and my heart swells. In this moment we're invincible. We're forever. 

To others he looks the same as always, but it's these bits of him that I've only recently been allowed to see change the light in which I see the man. To outsiders Sherlock often seems cold, evasive and distant. I can now appreciate how it's a mask he has carefully constructed. 

I am honoured to be the only one who knows what it's like to wake up ensnared in his limbs and watching him frown when I kiss him goodmorning. And I am even more honoured to be the only one who knows you can use his earlobes to render him utterly speechless. 

It is a grave responsibility that he's given me. With this intimate knowledge of him I would have the perfect ammunition to hurt him, hurt him worse than Moriarty, worse than anyone. But I never would. And that is exactly why I'm the one who is allowed to see the real Sherlock.

He gently leans against me and my smile widens. We stand there for a time, none of us caring exactly how long. 

I don't know if we'll ever come back to this churchyard again. Sherlock is not someone who would consider it important to carry regular offerings to graves.

There's nothing more here for us to discover so we start walking out. 

I grin as we leave through the metal gates. Sherlock raises his brows questioningly. 

"I'm imagining what it would be like if there were still two brothers like you around," I tell him.

He flashes me a smile. "I think you could handle that., Captain Watson."

"Sure I could, but I just want the one."

 

 

**\- The End -**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes the series. I have been overjoyed, ecstatic, overwhelmed and amazed by the reception both "The Road of Bones" and its sequel have received. Writing and posting this has been my greatest experience in this fandom so far. A huge thanks to all the readers, commenters, reccers and reviewers. 
> 
> I would love to find out what your thoughts are now that everything is wrapped up. A humble request: if this gets recced somewhere I would love to hear about it so I can visit :)
> 
> There will be a "DVD extras" thingy later this year with a deleted/extra scene. I will be posting another story in the meanwhile, one I have already finished writing and am in the process of editing. It will be quite different from this one.
> 
> If there could be an end credits roll song to "Screaming In Cathedrals", it would be "Horse" by Saint Savior (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi6EmeiWkNM)
> 
> That being said, I take a bow and thank you all again for joining me on this wild ride!

**Author's Note:**

> [The DVD Extras - including an epilogue scene](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5397092)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Alternate cover art for "Stress Fractures"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5139464) by [J_Baillier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Baillier/pseuds/J_Baillier)




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